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THE SPOTTED DEER. 



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^ SNOW-BERRIES. 



A BOOK FOR YOUNG FOLKS. 



By ALICE CARY. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 







' °f V/ashU^ 



BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 

1867. 

v 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



PRELUDE. 



MY little men and women 
Who sit with your eyes downcast, 
Turning the leaves of the Snow-Berries 
Over and over so fast, 

I know as I hear them flutter 

Like the leaves on a summer bough, 

You are looking out for the story about 
The fairies, — are n't you, now ? 

And so it is wise to tell you 
That you need not turn so fast, 

For there is n't a single fairy-tale 
In the book from first to last. 

My Muse is plain and homespun, — 
Quite given to work-day ways, — 

And she never spent an hour in the tent 
Of a fairy, in all her days. 

She is strongest on her native soil ; 

And you will see she sings 
Little in praise of elfs and fays, 

And less of queens and kings. 



PRELUDE. 

The finest ladies, so she says, 

And the gentlemen most grand, 
Are made by Nature gentlefolk, 

And are royal at first hand. 

She says of the women who sew and spin, 

And keep the house with care, 
That they are the queens and princesses 

Whose trains we ought to bear. 

And says of the men who hammer and forge, 

And clear and plough the land, 
That they are the worthy gentlemen 

Who make our country grand. 

A ribbon, she says, in the buttonhole, 

May go for what it goes, 
But he is the greatest man who is great 

Without such tinsel shows. 

Our country's flag can never drag, 
She says, nor its stars go down ; 

For how should it fall when one and all 
Are rightful heirs to the crown ! 

But, little women, and little men, 
I will tell you now, if you please, 

What I set out to tell you about, — 
Some real snow-berries. 



PRELUDE. 

All in the wild November, 

And a long, long time ago, 
When the birds were gone and the daisies done, 

And clouds hung chilly and low, 

Seven little and laughing children — 

I, as you guess, being one — 
Stood at the pane to charm the rain, 

And to catch a glimpse of the sun. 

At noon it was dreary as twilight, 

But just as the clock struck two 
There broke its way through the mass of gray 

A hand's-breadth of the blue. 

How close we pressed to see some cloud 

Put on a golden edge, — 
Head over head, and cheeks as red 

As the roses in a hedge. 

And the gray is grained with silver, 
And the blue has widened its streak ; 

And I was the one to see the sun, 
And I was the one to speak ! 

" Now, out and "away to the meadows ! 

The rain has been charmed, you see, — 
For here at our feet are our shadows, — 

Three, and one, and three. 



" Be sure, the beautiful violet 

In the grass no longer glows, 
But we may get a-burning yet, 

Some little lamp of a rose ! " 

So out we ran to the meadows, 

Though the time of flowers was done, 

And after us ran our shadows, — 
Three and three, and one. 

All up and down the rivulets 

That shaved so close to the sand, 

And all across the lowland moss, 
And across the stubble land ; 

And deep, and deeper into the wood, 
And under the hedge-row wall ; 

To the Callamus Pond, and on beyond, 
And never a flower at all ! 

Footsore, weary, and heart-sick, 

We had tramped for three long hours, 

When a voice so proud cried out aloud, 
" The flowers ! I 've found the flowers ! " 

Fast we flew to the top of the hill, 

And fast and faster down, 
And full in sight limbs shone so white 

From the thicket dull and brown. 



PEELUDE. 

The turf slides back, and farther back, 
We are there, we are under the trees ! 

And our eager hands are breaking the wands 
Of the milk-white snow-berries ! 

We had had a tramp, through cold and damp, 

Of three right weary hours, 
But we did not grieve, if you believe, 

That our berries were not flowers ! 

But each with a sheaf on his shoulder, 

As white as the whitest foam, 
We struck across the lowland moss, 

And into the lights of home. 

So, my little men and women, 
Who sit with your eyes downcast, 

Turning the leaves of the Snow-Berries, 
So eagerly and so fast, 

When that you fail to find the tale 

Of airy fancy bred, 
You may even get some pleasure yet 

From the stories in their stead. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

Page 
The Spotted Deer i 

Two Birds 26 

To the Boys 28 

Counting the Chickens . . . . . 29 

Advice 30 

Talk with a Tree 31 

A New- Year's Lesson 32 

The Burning Prairie 35 

PART II. 
The Gypsy Fortune-Teller . . . . . . .39 

The Cow-Boy 58 

Little Ellie 60 

The Brickmaker's Boy 62 

Fairy Folk 64 

Less or More 65 

Fine Talk - . . .66 

PART III. 
The Weaver's Daughters . . . . .69 

Three Little Women 86 

Pretty is that pretty does 88 

Elijah and I 89 



X CONTENTS. 

A Fisherman 90 

Amy to her Flowers 92 

Autumn Thoughts 94 

PART IV. 

The Man who stole a Cow . . . . . . 97 

The Potter's Luck 118 

A Poet's Walk 121 

The Snow-Flower 122 

Easy Work 124 

Courage 125 

Jenny and I 126 

PART V. 

The Charmed Money ' . 129 

To a Stagnant Pond 155 

The Poet to the Painter 158 

Only a Dream 160 

Inventory of a Drunkard 162 

Hunter's Song 163 

Hagen Walder 164 

A Goose and a Crow . 167 

PART VI. 
The Man with a Stone in his Heart . . -171 

Caty Jane . 196 

The Street Beggar 201 

Evil Chance 202 

Plea for the Boys 203 

Work 204 

Counsel 205 



PART I. 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 

THE sun was growing large toward the setting, 
and the light, more red than golden, shin- 
ing more and more faintly along a great mass of 
woods that reached backward and upward along 
the slope, till their tops seemed to touch the sky, 
almost, and the red and scarlet and yellow of the 
foliage — for it was autumn — to be giving their 
colors to the clouds, when an adventurer made 
fast his boat on the shore of the Ohio immediately 
opposite Little Sandy Creek ; and, having given 
some directions to his men, proceeded, accom- 
panied only by his dog, to climb the ascent along 
which the village of Lewisburgh was sprinkled. 

The villagers, as the stranger soon found, were 
but recent settlers on the land, — a tract of twenty 
thousand acres, extending along the river, and 
granted them by Congress in consideration of the 
frauds and impositions practised upon them in 
their earlier settlement of the neighboring town 
of Galliopolis. 

They were mostly French, or the descendants of 
French emigrants, — a gay, primitive sort of people, 



4 SNOW-BEKRIES. 

half thrifty, half negligent in their habits, and 
in some sort refined in their rudeness, and culti- 
vated in their ignorance. 

They were generally farmers in a small way, each 
having a few acres of ground attached to his cottage, 
upon which he raised vegetables, grapes, and corn. 

Almost every house had its flower-garden, its 
bird-cages at the window, and its pet animals 
about the door, and here and there in the out- 
skirts of the village stood a tent or a wigwam 
where Indians, to whom this people were very 
friendly, carried on their trades, — making baskets 
of birch bark, bags of bead-work, and other articles 
of a trifling and ornamental character. The cot- 
tages were generally painted or whitewashed, and 
together with the tents and wigwams gave the 
town a romantic and picturesque appearance. 

The sunset light, falling upon and brightening 
the mists of the river, gave a charming effect to 
the beauty which the landscape would have pos- 
sessed at any time ; and the numberless children 
engaged in careless sports, together with a great 
variety of pets, sporting with and among them, 
completed the enchantment of the scene. 

We have said the grounds about the houses 
were devoted chiefly to corn and vegetables ; but 
the peach-orchards with which the surrounding 
hills were planted afforded the chief source of in- 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 5 

come, yielding as they do without much cultiva- 
tion. They procured them coffee, delf-ware, cut- 
lery, and such simple articles of finery as the wo- 
men desired, leaving abundant time for those 
pleasurable and healthful activities of which they 
were so fond. 

It was September, with one of those mild, cloudy 
atmospheres that have the balminess of spring, and 
with the shadows came the young people out into 
the gardens, — the youths wearing blue jackets 
and trousers, which their mothers had spun and 
woven for them, and the maidens, party-colored 
dresses made in the gayest fashions which mem- 
ory or invention could suggest. 

Some of the more sober matrons brought out 
their wheels, or needle-work, and, under the trees, 
continued sewing and spinning till the last light 
faded from the hill-tops, and the bright stripes 
that variegated the woods were lost in one gen- 
eral and sombre hue. 

The older men gathered near these industrious 
housewives, and, as they chatted of days gone by, 
polished their guns or mended their fishing-tackle ; 
while the smaller children instructed the pet ani- 
mals, of which we have spoken, in various ingen- 
ious tricks, until, wearied out, they sunk on the 
grass among them, and fearlessly fell asleep ; so 
primitive and simple were the habits of these 
people. 



6 SNOW-BERRIES. 

The strange gentleman, as he leisurely strolled 
from one part of the village to another, found him- 
self the object of much respectful admiration and 
attention : the old women smiled, for he was hand- 
some, and when do women cease to give such rec- 
ognition to handsome faces? the old men lifted 
their caps with an exceeding elegance of manner, 
and smiled, too, a little less graciously perhaps, 
while the children ran up to him and made over- 
tures toward acquaintance by presents of flowers 
and grapes. On the shoulder of one little crea- 
ture a tame blue-jay would be fluttering, and give 
its noisy welcome, and on the head of another the 
paroquet, making such signs of gladness as it had 
been taught to make, and the summer duck and 
the peacock, meantime, would walk before him, 
spreading out their brilliant plumage as if in con- 
tribution to his pleasure. 

This sociability and friendship on the part of the 
children and their pets begot in the heart of the 
stranger a sympathetic and kindly interest almost 
at once, and his address so won upon these un- 
sophisticated people that they extended to him an 
invitation to sup with them under the trees, and 
afterward join in the dance of the evening. 

From the novelty of the suggestion, our adven- 
turer entered into it with great heartiness, and a 
vivacity scarcely exceeded by his demonstrative 



THE SPOTTED DEEE. 7 

entertainers. Almost every house contributed its 
quota of milk, wine, and peaches to the little fes- 
tival, while he himself furnished his share in white 
biscuits, which he caused to be brought from the 
boat, — a donation than which nothing could have 
proven more acceptable, the settlers having sub- 
sisted for several months continuously on bread 
composed chiefly of maize. 

Never was supper more cheerful, never was 
gayety more harmless ; and as for the stranger, 
it was rather as if some dear friend had come back 
to his home, than as though an adventurer were 
by chance amongst them for an hour. 

Three youths were in readiness with flutes and 
violins, to strike up after the viands had received 
due honor, the lads and lasses, not without effort, 
having restrained their impatience for more congen- 
ial merriment till the rural repast was concluded. 

By and by the moon came up in full-orbed glory. 
Hundreds of candles fixed in the trees contrib- 
uted to the illumination ; and such a picture of rus- 
tic enjoyment as was presented we can only hope 
to outline imperfectly. The women put away their 
wheels, the men their guns and fishing-tackle ; 
young mothers sung their babes to sleep, and, lay- 
ing them on the grass, covered them with their 
shawls, and leaving the faithful dogs to tend them, 
ran to join the dance with hearts as light as their 



8 SNOW-BERRIES. 

footsteps. All seemed young alike. Old French- 
men, lively as their grandchildren, were capering 
about in crimson caps ; while their wives, in dresses 
of the fashion of the time of Louis XI V., gossiped 
with one another with still more animated volubil- 
ity ; and the young people of both sexes, habited in 
holiday costumes, lit up the shady places with their 
bright blushes as they " tript it to and fro on the 
light fantastic toe." Numbers of the domestic an- 
imals I have mentioned followed their masters con- 
fidently among the graceful and merry circles, con- 
tributing to the picturesque and inartificial beauty 
of the scene. 

Among these animals were raccoons and opos- 
sums, both as tame as young pigs ; also a curious 
little animal called the ground-hog, which could 
never be so far tamed by any amount of kindness 
as not to snap at the hand that offered it food ; but 
the most remarkable and perhaps interesting of 
all the animals was a huge cub-bear, that was as 
full of playful tricks as a monkey, taking from 
time to time some one of the children between its 
paws, and rolling and tumbling on the ground with 
it as though it were going to tear it to pieces, and 
may be devour it into the bargain. 

Some of the Indian women and children drew 
near and gazed on the scene with a strange mix- 
ture of the grave and the mirthful in their faces ; 



THE SPOTTED DEER. \) 

and it was remarkable to observe with what fondness 
the wild creatures — birds and beasts — gathered 
about them. Here a youth might be seen with a 
wolf or ground-hog, and perhaps one or two other 
animals, between his legs, and there a young squaw, 
with all her black hair hidden by the splendors of 
the wings that were fluttering on her shoulders. 

The Indian men kept mostly at a distance, but 
one rawboned hunter was persuaded at last to 
perform the war-funeral and the marriage-dance, 
both of which he gave in grand style ; and so the 
festivities, or the more mirthful of them, came to 
an end. The old people, who had been sitting on 
the benches ranged along the walks, arose and went 
home, chattering and gesticulating as they went. 
The mothers took up their babies, and the dulcet 
symphonies fell to a lower and lower key, till by 
and by they faded down to silence, and quiet took 
up her melancholy reign. 

The heart of the stranger was sad as he took 
his separate way to the boat that, curtained with 
mists, lay hugging the shore ; for there is a power 
sometimes in the intercourse of a few hours that 
holds us like the friendship of years, and makes us 
feel poor and lonesome as we let go some hand 
whose single pressure has given us the assurance 
of a kindness that shall assert itself in eternity, if 
not in time. 

1* 



10 SNOW-BERRIES. 

He was half way down the slope, and could al- 
ready see the yellow-capped heads of the river- 
waves, and hear the whistling and talking of the 
distant raftsmen as they paddled their slow way to 
the music of the whippoor wills, when suddenly 
a sound unlike what his ear was tuned to struck 
upon his attention and jangled to discord all his 
sweet imaginings. 

It was not a sobbing nor crying, but a helpless, 
hopeless moaning that was more sorrowful to hear 
than either, for it indicated a heart, not so much 
crushed by sudden misfortune as wearied out by 
long suffering. 

Standing still to listen, our adventurer perceived 
a rude habitation by the roadside, from the win- 
dows of which streamed no light, and about which 
grew no flowers. Indeed there was not so much 
as a tree or a patch of green grass between the 
doorsill and the highway. 

A little way from this dreary habitation, seated 
on a mossy log, and mournfully caressing two beau- 
tiful deer that stood on either side of her, was a 
young girl, apparently in deep distress. One of 
these deer was as white as milk, with the exception 
of a few red freckles on the breast and one of the 
flanks ; the other, was as spotted as a leopard. 
Both seemed exceedingly fond of her ; and while 
the one was rubbing its graceful head against her 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 11 

bare shoulder, — jangling a bell which was at- 
tached to a shining collar it wore on its neck, — 
the other licked the hands which lay idly folded in 
the girl's lap. 

Her feet had just touched that marvellously beau- 
tiful, but also sadly uncertain ground where child- 
hood and womanhood meet, and perhaps the time 
and the situation lent their charm ; at any rate, 
she had that about her which drew and fixed the 
eyes of the stranger. He could not, perhaps, have 
himself expressed the peculiar nature of the inter- 
est awakened in him, as the sorrowful face looked 
out from its cloudy tresses with an expression of 
gentle appeal. He at once approached, and, under 
pretence of the greatest admiration for the spotted 
deer, made a proposal for their purchase. 

Was there anything under the. sun that would 
induce the fairy-like keeper of these singularly 
beautiful creatures to part with them for good and 
all ? How came she by them ? 0, he was en- 
chanted, especially with the more spotted of the 
two. 

" Tell me, will you part with them for any 
price ? " And bending low, the stranger waited in 
silence for her answer. 

" no, sir," replied the young girl, speaking 
English with an accent that betrayed her French 
origin. " I would not part with them for a whole 



12 SNOW-BERRIES. 

lapful of gold ; they are my only friends ! " and 
she caught back her heavy hair and bent her great 
dark eyes upon the stranger as she spoke, with an 
earnestness that drew hirn almost to her feet. 

" Your only friends ! how can that be, my pretty 
one ? Surely you are deserving a kinder fate," he 
said. 

She did not let fall the gathered-up tresses to con- 
ceal the blushes tangling redly along her cheeks. 
She was too ingenuous, and too unaffectedly friend- 
less to receive from the stranger's words any 
meaning, save that of genuine kindness. On the 
contrary, she told him all her little story with a 
confiding artlessness and simplicity that must have 
touched the best feelings of his manhood, and made 
him friendly if he had not previously been so. 

When she was no higher than her spotted deer, 
she said, her good mother died and was carried 
away and left on the hill that stood up so dark and 
so high between the yellow woods and the river, — 
their few cows and simple furniture were sold to 
defray the expenses of a long illness, and procure 
something a little better than charitable support for 
herself. 

So slender a fortune was soon exhausted, of 
course, and our story-teller, whose name was Eve- 
line, was elbowed and jostled about, now here, now 
there, — now in the way, and now out of the way. 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 13 

— now in the village, and now perhaps in the wig- 
wam of some Indian hunter, — drudging with the 
squaws part of the time, and shooting with the bow 
and arrow the other part. In the spring-time she 
spun flax, in the summer she carded wool, in 
the time of the grape harvest she gleaned, and, in 
short, did what she could find to do ; for it is the 
misfortune of poverty, that it has not a choice even 
of its work, 

At length she fell into the hands of the penuri- 
ous old woman with whom she still lived, and for 
whom she spun all day, and far into the night 
sometimes. 

" And where did you find these friends ? " asked 
the stranger, seating himself on the mossy log a 
little way from her, and doing his best to win her 
favor through the praises he bestowed upon her 
beautiful pets. 

Then he told the two deer in a most playful 
way, what blessed fortune had befallen them when 
they fell into the hands of the little maid who was 
their mistress, and asked them if they loved her as 
so gentle and good a maiden deserved to be loved. 

" yes ! " answered Eveline for them, not in the 
least embarrassed by the implied compliment. " 
yes, they love me with all their two little hearts ! " 

Then, as she knitted up her long hair on her fin- 
gers, and ravelled it out again, she told him, with a 



14 SNOW-BERRIES. 

generous eagerness to oblige, how she had been 
used to bring home the cows from the meadow 
away beyond the orchard, and farther off than he 
could see, and how tired her feet would grow in the 
lonesome path for the want of company, and how, 
happening one night to meet an old man who was 
peddling fawns, she gave her ear-rings in exchange 
for two of them, hoping by her spinning she should 
soon be able to replace the rings. " But I never 
have been," she concluded, with a sigh that betrayed 
her fondness for ornaments and the sacrifice she 
had made in behalf of her beautiful favorites. 

" Suppose I should give you the prettiest pair of 
ear-rings in the world, — coral drops, with gold 
setting," — said the adventurer, unknitting her 
black hair from her hand and folding it within his 
own as he spoke, " what would you give me in 
exchange, — the two deer ? " 

Eveline looked bewildered for a moment, and 
then tears began filling up her beautiful eyes at the 
thought of parting from her only companions. " No, 
no," she said at last, " I cannot give them up, for 
you must know, sir, they love me, and even the 
pretty ear-rings you promise me could not buy me 
that ; besides, the old woman, who is my mis- 
tress, would steal them from me as she did my red 
ribbon to-night, keeping me away from the dance. 
sir, it was breaking my heart when you came." 



THE SPOTTED DEEE. 15 

And with a charming simplicity she went on 
asking questions about the evening gayeties, now 
bursting into tears at the remembrance of the sweet 
red ribbon with which her hard mistress had 
adorned her own ugly person, while herself was 
wrongfully compelled to mope at home ; and now 
laughing and blushing at the stranger's eloquently 
expressed regrets that he should not have had the 
pleasure of dancing with her. 

" Ah, but you will come some other evening ! " 
she cried, with the eager hopefulness of one who 
had never known a pleasure like that; and then 
she said, if it would really please him to dance 
with her, she would weave a bright garland of 
flowers for her head, and wear her blue bodice and 
scalloped petticoat ! 

What an honor and delight she would have, to 
be sure ; and would n't the young girls all envy 
her, and would n't the old woman who was her mis- 
tress grow black in the face as a cloud, with angry 
irritation! And as long as she lived the memory 
of that night would be like a blessed candle burn- 
ing away behind her in the dark ! What evening 
might she expect to see him, and would he not 
come very, very soon ? How lovely she appeared 
as she waited with eager uplifted face for his re- 
ply, her cheeks like two red roses, and the beating 
of her heart making the ruffled cape that was tied 
across her bosom flutter again. 



16 SNOW-BEREIES. 

The stranger was evidently touched by the sim- 
ple sincerity of the fresh young beauty, and bent 
his admiring eyes very near the roselit cheek as 
he explained to her the little probability there was 
of their ever meeting again, even for a single 
evening. 

" I am but a rude traveller, my pretty one," he 
said, "in love with adventure, and liking the 
woods and the fields, the birds, the beasts, and 
the curious insects of the air, better than I like 
the homes of men and the tameness and common- 
ness of civilized society." 

If life could be all one moonlit evening, and all 
a dance, and if he could dance with her, why it 
would be very nice and pleasant, but that could 
not be ; his boat was waiting even then on the 
near river, just beyond the green fringe of wil- 
lows that she could see so plain, — waiting to 
bear him, he knew not where, but somewhere far 
enough away from her, he was afraid. 

"No, no, my child," — and he sighed as he 
spoke, — " it is not likely we shall ever meet again 
in this world ; but before long you will find a lover 
to dance with, and then you will forget you have 
ever seen the boatman who sits beside you now, I 
dare say." 

" O r how can you say so ? " answered Eveline. 
"If I am not to dance with you, I shall never 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 17 

dance at all, but spin and spin till I spin me a 
shroud." Then she hung her head and made no 
effort to conceal the tears that came to her in- 
nocent eyes ; and her lately happy heart ceasing to 
nutter in her bosom, like a bird that is learning to 
fly, lay there as still and as heavy as lead. " If I 
had only the red ribbon to give you, so that some- 
times when you happened to see it you might re- 
member me!" she said, at last ; " but the old 
woman has stolen my ribbon, and that is the only 
ornament I ever had, except the ear-rings, that I 
parted with as I told you. Ah, it is too bad that 
I have nothing to give you ! " 

Then the stranger told her not to fret because 
the old woman had stolen her ribbon. " And for 
that matter, you shall have another," he said, " if 
you will only give me the deer. I can send it 
with the ear-rings, you know." And then he told 
her, seeing that she was not quite satisfied, lightly 
touching her fair young head as he said it, that he 
would take, of choice, one of the long shining 
tresses that fell adown her shoulder. " And 
would you indeed prize a lock of my hair ? " 
cries Eveline, in innocent surprise, ; " cut -it off 
then!" And she leaned her head down to him, 
singling one long rippling curl from the rest. 

Such simple confidence was not to be trifled 
with, and rising, the stranger said in an altered 



18 SNOW-BERRIES. 

tone that he must not deprive her of the shining 
tress, much as he would prize it, but that he still 
hoped she would be persuaded to give him one of 
her beautiful pets, — the one with only the spotted 
flank, or the one with the skin like a leopard, — 
just as she chose. " I know how much you love 
them, but for my sake ! " he went on, — and then he 
said, no, not for his sake, but for the sake of those 
coral ear-rings all set in gold that he was going 
to send back to her ! And while she hesitated, he 
said, perhaps just to say something, that he would 
have the spotted deer ; and he fell to coaxing and 
petting it with all his might. The deer, being 
very tame, responded to his kind words by going 
close to him and eating grass from his hand, and 
by a variety of fond and playful actions which it 
had been taught. 

" And would you really send me the ear-rings, 
and such lovely ones as you say ? " inquired the girl, 
almost persuaded, as it seemed. Then her eyes 
fell, and in a changed voice she said : " But why, 
sir, do you choose the spotted, and not the white 
deer? I think, of the two, I would rather part 
with the white one." 

And putting her arms around the neck of the 
spotted deer, she drew it close to her bosom, and 
began prattling to it in the tenderest manner. No, 
no, she could not part with that ! The white one 



THE SPOTTED DEEE. 19 

was not so fond of her, and was surely not so pret- 
ty. Why, Spotty would follow her all daylong. 
She almost thought he understood every word 
she spoke, and sometimes he would even come into 
the house and lie by the side of her little low bed 
all the night. 

Then she made a confidant of her beautiful 
Spotty, and told him that his little mistress loved 
him better than anything else in all the world ! 
Sell him for ear-rings, indeed ! No, not though 
they were as big and as splendid as the new moon ! 
Then she did actually kiss the forehead of the deer, 
and whispered something so close in his ear that 
the stranger could not hear what she said, but 
something that was doubtless very pretty, if the 
dumb thing could only have understood it. 

" And so you like your spotted deer the best ? " 
the stranger said, as soon as he could get the atten- 
tion of the young girl. 

" yes, so much the best ! Don't you see how 
fond of me he is ? " 

" Yery well, you may keep your Spotty. I think, 
on the whole, I prefer the hind. Come, my beau- 
ty ! " and he took the ear of the white deer in his 
hand, as though he would lead it away. 

Instantly the girl pushed off his hand and took 
the head of the white hind in her lap. " No, no ! 
my poor Whity, your little mistress will not see 



20 SNOW-BEREIES. 

you abused that way, not she ! " Then to the 
stranger : " She is used to caresses, I assure you, 
and not to having her ears pulled." 

" But I thought you said she was not pretty, 
and you did not care for her," answered the 
stranger ; " and I thought, too, she was my prop- 
erty, and not yours ! Did you not bargain her 
away for the ear-rings ? " 

" No, I did not bargain Whity away at all ; it 
was Spotty I bargained away, and then I took Spot- 
ty back, so that neither one is yours." 

Then she began talking to Whity just as she 
had done to Spotty before. " Suppose you are not 
so very pretty," she said ; " is your little mistress 
going to sell you away for that ! No indeed ! her 
heart is not a lump of ice, and she could not be so 
cruel, not for all the ear-rings under the sun. 
Is it your fault that you are not beautiful ? No, it 
is not your fault, but you are beautiful ! 0, so 
beautiful ! there never was a deer in all the world 
so beautiful as my own little Whity ! " 

She could part with Spotty best ; he was sturdy 
and independent, and did not need her half so 
much as poor timid Whity. 

Then the stranger said she might choose between 
her deer, but one of them he must have. And 
then he drew a picture of Eveline in her blue bod- 
ice and scalloped petticoat, dancing on the green 



THE SPOTTED DEEK. 21 

with the very handsomest of all the young fellows 
in the village. "And what ' would you not give, 
then, for the coral ear-rings ? " he concluded. 

Here was a dazzling temptation. Would the 
stranger be very good to poor Spotty, just as good 
and kind as was his own mistress ? To be sure he 
would ; never deer in the world fared half so roy- 
ally as Spotty should fare. 

After some further talk, it was concluded be- 
tween them that he should take Spotty and send 
back to her the ear-rings from the next landing- 
point. Then he took from his finger a small gold 
ring ; would Eveline wear that in token of his 
promise, and perhaps, too, as a reminder of him- 
self? It was a poor trifle, but he had nothing 
better to offer. 

Ah yes, Eveline would take the ring, and wear it, 
— not in token of his promise, and not to remind 
her of a stranger. He would never seem a stranger 
to her, and she would require nothing to remind her 
of him ; but for all that, she would take the ring. 

So he took her hand, and when he had put the 
ring on it, said it was now time to say good by. 

But Eveline kept the hand, like the sweet, simple 
child that she was, saying she would walk with him 
to the river-side, and watch the vanishing boat till 
it was quite out of sight. " And then I will go 
back alone," she said ; " and then, and then, — why 
then I do not know what I shall do ! " 



22 SNOW-BERRIES. 

So they walked together, the two deer following, 
through the mingling lights and shadows, and to- 
ward the misty borders of the river, which they 
reached at last, and could see through the swaying 
boughs of the willows the waiting boat. 

A few moments they stood in silence on the shore, 
Eveline little guessing the charming picture she 
made, — the misty moonlight all round her, and 
the graceful head of her spotted deer beneath her 
hand, while the white one stood a little way off 
scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding mist. 

" Be sure I will take the best care of your beau- 
tiful pet," said the stranger, as he was about leap- 
ing into the boat, " for your sake, my dear child, 
if not for his ; so you need not fear to trust him 
away from you." 

Eveline was sobbing now, sobbing so she could 
hardly speak ; and all at once she threw her arms 
around the neck of her favorite, and, holding it fast, 
said she could not let it go ; he might have the 
white one, but the spotted one she must keep, 
she really did love him best after all ! 

" Then Whity it shall be ; come, Whity, my 
beauty, come ! " And the stranger began to coax 
and pet the white hind ; but she would not come, 
shying off and snuffing the air instead. Then call- 
ing two of his men, he told them to bring her 
aboard by main force. 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 23 

" No ! " cries the little mistress in an angry voice. 
" She shall go of her own free will, or she shall not 
go at all. I will never stand by and see her pnlled 
and dragged from me as though she were the worst 
creature in the world, instead of the best." 

" Then persuade her yourself," said the stranger ; 
"- you know how to coax her into anything, I dare 
say." 

" Yes, but I will not persuade her to leave me ! 
I have not so much love that I can afford to do 
that. If she is a mind to follow you, I must part 
with her, that is all ; but I will never coax her to 
do so, — never, never ! " 

" Then I suppose I must go alone, after all," 
said the stranger, sadly. " And you, my pretty 
one, remember that you cannot have your white 
hind for an grnament when the day of dancing 
comes again." 

" I shall never want to dance," answered Eve- 
line, " not if I cannot dance with you ! " And she 
lifted her face to him, all eloquent with its innocent 
sorrow. 

Then he told her that her life could not be more 
lonely than his, going through the wide world, — 
in wilderness places, and in deserts, with only two 
or three rude men for companions. 

By this time the white hind had come back to 
its mate and its mistress, and, drawing its head 
close to her, Eveline asked it in whispers if it 



24 SNOW-BERRIES. 

would like to go with the stranger and sail away- 
down the beautiful river, pointing as she did so to 
the boat. It was perhaps in answer to the motion 
of her hand that the hind immediately stepped 
nearer to the shore. "Ah, then, she is yours, 
sir," said Eveline, every word a separate tremble ; 
" but I don't want the ear-rings. I can't sell any- 
thing I love." Then she gave him special charge 
about the feeding and general keeping and care, — 
indeed, a mother who was parting with her baby 
could hardly have been more tender in her en- 
treaties and directions. " The poor thing is so 
used to me," she said, " what will it do ? " 

" There is one thing that you can do," answered 
the boatman, " since you love your pet so very 
much. You can go along and be its keeper." 

Eveline was smiling and blushing and trembling 
all at once now, and the boatman went on: "I 
see only one difficulty, I am afraid the pretty crea- 
ture, being so fond of the mistress, will not care 
at all about the master ! " 

" But I will teach her to love you ! " cries the 
little maiden, eagerly. 

" And how, my lady of the woodland," answered 
the boatman, " will you contrive to do this ? " 

" Just by loving you myself," she said. " There 
is no teaching like example, you know." And she 
looked up in his face with a sweet sincerity, that 
charmed the stranger more than he had ever been 



THE SPOTTED DEER. 25 

charmed by any beautiful bird or bright flower, or 
by anything lovely that he had ever seen. 

She would go, to be sure she would go, " But 
0, sir, how are you to get nie over this wet 
sand-bar that lies between the bank and the 
boat ? " There was witchery in the trust and the 
timidity, alike. 

" Why, this way, my pretty mistress of the 
fawns," he answered ; and putting his arm about 
her waist, sprung with her clear across the sand- 
bar and into the boat. Of course the deer fol- 
lowed, and directly all three were sailing away 
together toward the golden colors of the sunset, 
the master of the boat singing as they sailed, — 

" Night, with all thy stars look down, 
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, — 
Never smiled the inconstant moon 
On a pair so true." 

But there is no need to linger any longer ; my 
young reader no doubt guesses the end of the 
story, and can make for himself a picture of the 
boat, as, dividing the silver waves below, and the 
yellow moonlight above, it bore away the artless 
and gentle keeper of the spotted and white deer, 
to the realization, let us hope, of brighter dreams 
than even the promised ear-rings suggested.* 

* This little story is based upon an account which I found in a 
volume printed about sixty years ago, and entitled " Travels in 
America." 



26 SNOW-BERRIES. 



TWO BIRDS. 

IN the blithe and budding weather 
Of an April-time of yore, 
Two wild-birds sat together 
In the peach-tree at my door. 

And each was gayly furnished, 
And in beauty all complete, 

From the topknot brightly burnished 
To the rosy little feet. 

Now under shadows winging, 
And now hopping forth to view, 

To the other each was singing, — 
Thus the prouder of the two, — 

Thus only, " Pretty ! Pretty ! " 

In a low, caressing strain, 
While in answer, " Sweety ! Sweety ! n 

Softly sounded back again. 

The buds to flowers were starting, 
And the young leaves came in sight, 

While they stayed together courting 
In the peach-tree ; but one night 



TWO BIEDS. 27 

They vanished. Swift with duties 

Ran the time into the past, 
Till I found my truant beauties, 

As I knew I should, at last. 

Making tender, twittering hushes, 

That were sweet as any words, 
Flying in and out the bushes 

With a flock of little birds. 

The snow stayed all unmelted, 

And the winds of winter beat 
On the boughs that lately tilted 

Under rosy little feet, 

When I heard a bird thus crying, 
From the cold and frozen ground, 

To the mate above him flying, 

Half-distracted, round and round : — 

" My wings are stiff and sleety, 

I am dying in my bed, — 
I am dying, darling." " Sweety." 

That was every thing she said. 



28 SNOW-BERKIES. 



TO THE BOYS. 

DON'T you be afraid, boys, 
To whistle loud and long, 
Although your quiet sisters 
Should call it rude or wrong. 

Keep yourselves good-natured, 

And if smiling fails, 
Ask them if they ever saw 

Muzzles on the quails ! 

Or the lovely red-rose 

Try to hide her flag, 
Or the June to smother all 

Her robins in a bag ! 

If they say the teaching 

Of nature is n't true, 
Get astride the fence, boys, 

And answer with a Whew ! 

I '11 tell you what it is, boys, 
No water-wheel will spin, 

Unless you set a whistle 
At the head of every pin. 



COUNTING THE CHICKENS. 29 

And never kite flew skyward 

In triumph like a wing 
Without the glad vibration 

Of a whistle in the string. 

And when the days are vanished 

For idleness and play, 
'T will make your labors lighter 

To whistle care away. 

So don't you be afraid, boys, 

In spite of bar and ban, 
To whistle, — it will help you each 

To make an honest man. 



COUNTING THE CHICKENS. 

COME, Joe ! come, Johnny ! the chickens are out, 
As true as I am alive ! 
Let me count, — one, two, three, four, — 
0, if I can find but one more 

Of the beauties, that will be five ! 

Just look and see how they hop about ! 

And see what a pretty thing 
The little gray one is, and oh! 
There is another one ! see it, Joe, 

With its head through its mother's wing ! 



30 SNOW-BERRIES. 

My dainty darlings, be still, be still ! 

Just a minute till I can see 
Which is prettiest, — that with down 
Softly yellow and striped with brown, 

Or that with the golden bill. 

That one is cunning, with back and breast 

Black as a raven, and so small, — 
No bigger than one of its mother's eggs, 
And the tiniest little rosy legs, — 
I hardly saw it at all. 

I will double up my hand to a nest, 

Afraid though I am of the mother hen, 
And put them into it one by one, 
The gray, the yellow, the black, and dun, 
And see which is prettiest then ! 



ADVICE. 



DO not look for wrong and evil, — . 
You will find them if you do ; 
As you measure for your neighbor 
He will measure back to you. 

Look for goodness, look for gladness, 
You will meet them all the while ; 

If you bring a smiling visage 
To the glass, you meet to smile. 



TALK WITH A TREE. 31 



TALK WITH A TREE. 

STANDING straight up in the glory 
Of God's sunshine, O my tree, 
I would know thy wondrous story, — 

Wilt thou speak and tell it me ? 
With head in the sun and feet in the ground, 
My heart it keepeth sweet and sound, 
And evermore I grow and grow, 
And this is all I know. 

Rough and wild and many-jointed, 

Thou art clothed with gracious hues, 
And thy body is anointed 

Nightly with the pleasant dews. 
The sun and the storm I gladly greet, 
And my heart it keepeth sound and sweet, 
And my head is high and my root is low, 
And this is all I know. 

All thy blossoms come in season, — 

In their time thy fruits come in, — 
Canst thou give to me a reason ? 

Thou dost neither toil nor spin. 
Deep I strike my roots in the ground, 
And my heart it keepeth sweet and sound, 
And my buds they bloom, and my fruits they glow, 
And this is all I know. 



32 SNOW-BERRIES. 

From thy roots in silence pushing 

Through the dark and gloomy ground, — 
From thy boughs with blossoms blushing, — 

From thy heart so sweet and sound, 
Thou seemest to tell me, tree of mine, 
We are not all earthy nor all divine, 
But sown in corruption to be raised 
Incorruptible, — God be praised. 



A NEW-YEAR'S LESSON. 

THE house was little and low and old, 
But the logs on the hearth burned bright, 
And two little girls with locks of gold 

Were playing in the light ; 
And their hearts were glad and their laughter gay, 
For the morrow would bring the New-Year's day. 

The house was little, the house was low ; 

But cheerily shone the light 
Out of the window and over the snow 

(For the ground with snow was white), 
Cheerily shimmered and shone about, 
As if there were fire within and without. 

An ancient, gnarled, and knotty tree 
Hung all about the eaves ; 



A NEW-YEAR'S LESSON. 

So the little house just seemed to be 

A bird's-nest in the leaves ; 
And the little girls, in homespun dressed, 
Just like the nestlings of the nest. 

And still as the wind with sharp teeth snapped 

A leaflet sere and brown, 
Right merrily their hands they clapped 

To see it sliding down, 
Past the firelight's ruddy glow, 
To the fire that seemed to be in the snow. 

" O mother, mother ! " they cried with a will, 
Their cheeks to the window pressed, 

And peeping shyly over the sill, 
Like birdlings over the nest, 

" See how it flutters and flies about ; 

It thinks there is fire in the snow, no doubt." 

And then they laugh and shout with glee, 

And tell how wild it whirls, 
And call it crazy as it can be, 

" You foolish little girls ! " 
The mother sadly and sweetly said, 
Laying a hand on each golden head : — 

" Suppose that leaf a crazy thing, 

My darlings ; even suppose 
It thought the firelight glimmering 

Out there upon the snows, 

2* O 



34 SNOW-BERRIES. 

The same as the fire upon the hearth, 
Why, that were not a cause for mirth ! n 

And then she says, as pearl on pearl 
Her pale cheek trickles down : 

" It makes me think of the beggar-girl 
We saw in the streets of the town ; 

Her hand as little and brown as a leaf, — 

Just such a picture of houseless grief. 

" By some sharp breath of fortune whirled 
Away from her mother's knee, 

She is left to flutter about the world, 
The same as the leaf of a tree ; 

No roof for her, my dears, you know, 

Nor fire, except the fire in the snow. 

" In her poor hand, so brown and cold, 

No New-Year's gift will shine." 
Dropped low was each shining head of gold. 

" I wish I could give her mine ! " 
Cry both little girls, as they see the glow 
Of their New- Year's fire outside in the snow. 



THE BURNING PRAIRIE. 35 



THE BURNING PRAIRIE. 

THE prairie stretched as smooth as a floor, 
Far as the eye could see, 
And the settler sat at his cabin door 

With a little girl on his knee, 
Striving her letters to repeat, 
And pulling her apron over her feet. 

His face was wrinkled, but not old, 

For he held an upright form, 
And his shirt-sleeves back to the elbow rolled, 

They showed a brawny arm ; 
And near in the grass, with toes upturned, 
Was a pair of old shoes, cracked and burned. 

A dog with his head betwixt his paws 

Lay lazily dozing near, 
Now and then snapping his tar-black jaws 

At the fly that buzzed at his ear ; 
And near was the cow-pen, made of rails, 
And a bench that held two milking-pails. 

In the open door an ox-yoke lay, 

The mother's odd redoubt, 
To keep the little one at her play 

On the floor from falling out ; 
While she swept the hearth with a turkey-wing, 
And filled her tea-kettle at the spring. 



36 SNOW-BERRIES. 

The little girl on her father's knee, 

With eyes so bright and blue, 
From A B C to X Y Z 

Had said her lesson through, 
When a wind came over the prairie-land, 
And caught the primer out of her hand. 

The watch-dog whined, the cattle lowed, 

And tossed their horns about ; 
The air grew gray as if it snowed ; 

" There will be a storm, no doubt ! " 
So to himself the settler said ; 
" But, father, why is the sky so red ? " 

And the little girl slid off his knee, 

And all of a tremble stood ; 
" Good wife," he cried ; " come out and see ! 

The clouds are as red as blood ! " 
" God save us !" cried the settler's wife, 
" The prairie 's afire ! We must run for life I " 

She caught the baby up. " Come ! come ! 

Are ye mad ? to your heels, my man ! " 
He followed, terror-stricken, dumb, 

And so they ran and ran ; 
Close upon them the snort and swing 
Of buffaloes, madly galloping. 

The wild wind like a sower sows 
The ground with sparkles red, 



THE BURNING PRAIEIE. 37 

And the flapping wings of bats and crows 

Through the ashes overhead, 
And the bellowing deer and the hissing snake, — 
"What a swirl of terrible sounds they make ! 

No gleam of the river water yet ! 

And the flames leap on and on ! 
A crash, and a fiercer whirl and jet, 

And the settler's house is gone ! 
The air grows hot. " This fluttering curl 
Would blaze like flax," says the little girl. 

And as the smoke against her drifts, 

And the lizard slips close by her, 
She tells how the little cow uplifts 

Her speckled face from the fire ; 
For she cannot be hindered from looking back 
At the fiery dragon on their track. 

They hear the crackling grass and sedge, 

The flames as they whir and rave ; 
On, on ! they are close to the water's edge ! 

They are there, breast-deep in the wave ! 
And lifting their little ones high o'er the tide, — 
"We are saved, thank God ! we are saved!" they cried. 



PART II, 

THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 

WHERE the bend of a beautiful river kept 
bright and green a little spot of this goodly 
earth longer than it stayed bright and green else- 
where, there used to be made, year after year, at 
the season when the leaves turn yellow and the 
mosses brown, a gypsy camp. 

When the frost first bit the grass, and the rivu- 
lets hid themselves away, expectation stood a-tip- 
toe among the young people, and so continued, till 
some farmer's boy, perchance, riding home from 
mill, along the river road, would see the smoke of 
their fires curling and rippling high above the tree- 
tops, and hurrying home, would set the household 
astir with the news, — " The gypsies have come ! " 

Then there would be whispering and laughing 
among the girls, and a missing of the lads when 
the family circle drew about the evening fire ; for 
it was the habit of the youth of both sexes to steal 
out to the gypsy camp and have their fortunes told ; 
and many a cock that had been used to crow in the 
morning, and tell the sleepy inmates of the farm- 
house it was time to get up and set the breakfast 



42 SNOW-BEKKIES. 

in order, and yoke the steers, had to boii in some 
gypsy pot to pay for it. Among the vagrants of the 
camp was an ugly old woman, known to the peo- 
ple of the neighborhood by the name of " Mother 
Crow." She seldom strayed from among the tents, 
and was usually to be found, till after the middle 
of the night, peeping and muttering over a great 
kettle of simmering herbs, of wonderful power, if 
she were to be believed ; and indeed some persons 
said, who had watched her stirring her mess with 
a crooked and thorny stick, that they had seen 
sparkles of unearthly light rising out of it and set- 
tling along her forehead like a row of stars. How- 
ever this were, she was certainly more feared and 
believed in than all her tribe put together. It may 
be that her wisdom was made up chiefly of cun- 
ning, but no matter, — it passed current ; it may 
be too that the snow-white hair, straggling from 
beneath her cap of rabbit-skins, and veiling the in- 
tense glitter of her snaky eyes, had somewhat to 
do with her fascination. She was very tall, and 
upright as an oak sapling, but her dimensions in 
other respects no one could arrive at very defi- 
nitely, as she was generally loosely wrapt in a 
big blue blanket, with a border of scarlet stripes. 
Many a night the home-going fisherman rowed 
softly ashore by the gypsy camp, to learn of Mother 
Crow whether his sweetheart were false or true, and 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 43 

paid her with the choice treasure of his net ; and 
it generally happened that he was richer than be- 
fore ; such exceeding worth is there in a happy 
heart, and Mother Crow was apt to see the bright 
side of things. 

She could instantly tell, so she used to say, when 
she stepped on the graves of persons who had been 
buried a hundred or more years, but she could not 
tell whether the ground she trod on were to hold a 
coffin on the morrow or not. She could see future 
events, she used to say, but not the time at which 
they would take place, and so she got along very 
well with her prophecies. 

Some persons, too good or too great to seek a 
gypsy fortune-teller themselves, would gladly listen 
to the gossip about her ; or if they happened near 
the camp at night, would stop and peep over the 
shoulder of some lad for the sake of seeing her as 
she sat inside a ring of eager upturned faces, tell- 
ing all the girls and boys whether their sweethearts 
had black eyes or blue, and whether they would 
marry and make a journey across the sea, and come 
back with a great deal of gold, and live happy for- 
ever afterwards, or whether they would marry, get 
gold, and be happy without the great journey. 

And it is no wonder these people thus stole a 
glimpse of the strange woman, for she made such 
a picture as one does not see every day in the 



44 SNOW-BERRIES. 

week, nor every month in the year, nor every year 
in ten. 

Among those who visited her the oftenest, and 
upon whom she levied the heaviest taxes, was an 
old man who lived in a ruinous house by the river- 
side, alone, and whose strange ways had shut him 
quite without the pale of society, — in truth, he 
was supposed to have lost his wits, and was treated 
accordingly, when, by chance, his neighbors came 
in contact with him. The columns that once held 
up the porches of his house fell down one after 
another, and lay where they fell ; the once beau- 
tiful garden ran to weeds, and, instead of flower- 
stalks, thistles stood up very high and proud ; 
spiders made looms in the windows, and wove there 
all the day long, making curtains so thick it could 
hardly be told at night whether or not the old 
man's candle were alight. 

And the truth is, nobody cared whether or not 
his candle was alight. He .wore a shirt of patched 
flannel, trousers of an old fashion, and shoes quite 
distinct from the modern style ; and instead of rid- 
ing in a fine carriage he walked on foot. Perhaps 
it was not altogether his fault that he was shy and 
unneighborly, for certain it is, nobody stopped to 
inquire whether it were or not ; and Mother Crow 
herself, skinny and haggish as she was, created a 
lighter sensation of awe than he. His hair hung 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 45 

over his shoulders white as snow, and his beard 
fell down his bosom in a profusion of silver waves, 
that contrasted strangely with the black and won- 
derfully inquisitive eyes, and made the children 
hang their heads when he came near, and older 
people too sometimes, for there was in his face, it 
must be owned, a look that seemed to accuse men. 
Indeed, he avoided men and women too, as far as 
might be ; but when he could not help seeing them 
he was civil in spite of the accusing look, which, if 
it had been examined closely, would perhaps have 
been found to be distrust rather than accusation, 
after all. 

" I don't like him ! " people used to say ; and it 
may be that they did not stop to think why they did 
not like him, and it may be that they would not 
have seen much to like if they had stopped to think, 
for we cannot very well see what is lovable in any- 
body till we first love them. Love not only sees 
existing good qualities, but creates good qualities. 

All sorts of strange stories were told of this man, 
and in connection with everything belonging to 
him ; this, among the rest. 

One of the chimneys of his house had fallen, or 
had been blown down by the wind, perhaps, and 
the story ran that it had been tumbled down by 
the witches who were in the habit of seeking the 
crazy man's chamber by this means. Then it was 



46 SNOW-BERRIES. 

reported, too, that a well of once sweet waters in 
his door-yard had grown brackish, and had petrified 
an ox that had chanced to fall into it, and that his 
horns might be seen any day sticking out of the 
well's mouth ! 

It is strange that such things should ever have 
been believed ; but let a story once get afloat, no 
matter how improbable, and it will hold its place 
a long time in spite of everything. 

The strangest and most improbable of all the 
stories related to the wife of the " crazy man," — 
for there was a time when his beard was not white, 
when his flannel shirt was not patched, and when 
he had as pretty a wife as was to be seen in all the 
county-side. Most of his neighbors could remem- 
ber very well when the fallen chimney stood up 
red and proud as could be ; when at night there 
were lights shining through all the windows, so 
dark and gloomy now ; and when the cedar beams 
along the porches, against which hung the gray 
muddy nests of wasps, were bright and sweet, and 
the rows of pillars white as milk. They could tell 
about having sometimes seen a gentle-faced and 
golden-haired woman walking in the garden, and 
how all the roses bowed their heads down toward 
her as she went ; and about the little child that she 
used to lead by the hand ; and they could whisper 
too, and they often did whisper dark surmises as 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 47 

to what became of the woman and the child, for 
they disappeared one after the other, and were 
never seen or heard of more. 

There were even hints of murder, and some 
people said that the beautiful woman and child 
were lying petrified away down in the well under 
the stone ox ! 

But these things were only spoken under breath, 
for all that was certainly known was, that a fair- 
faced woman and a lovely little child used to be 
seen about the grounds, and that they were seen 
no more ; but that anything mysterious was con- 
nected with their disappearance nobody dare posi- 
tively assert. But it was asserted and believed 
that often, at night, strange and unearthly sounds 
were heard about the old house, and in the end it 
came to be thought that the old house was haunted 
with witches, if with nothing worse ; so that often 
when these noises were supposed to prevail, the more 
superstitious of the people would shake their heads, 
and whisper, apart from the hearing of the chil- 
dren, " They are the echoes of the love-ditties the 
crazy man used to sing to the beautiful woman ! " 
And then the windows would be put down and the 
Bibles opened and prayers offered, and sometimes, 
after all these pious ceremonies, a horseshoe would 
be hung over the door-case to protect the household 
against witch-work, so strangely are the minds of 



48 SNOW-BERRIES. 

men and women constituted. And at such times 
the frightened children would look wonderingly up 
into the faces of the old folks, and ask to have the 
candles trimmed anew, or that another stick might 
be added to the fire. 

The story ran too, that often of winter nights, 
when the moon shone bright on the snow that had 
been drifted into fantastic but smooth curves along 
the meadows, and in the ragged edges of the 
woods, there used to be heard a footstep going 
along their edges, — tramp, tramp, — and in the 
morning it would be seen that the snow was writ- 
ten all over with letters which the crazy man had 
traced with his finger, and the letters spelled one 
name, over and over, sometimes a thousand times, 
and that name was Hesther ; but whether it had 
been borne by the missing woman, or whether it 
was a fantasy of his bewildered brain, was left to 
conjecture. 

The only person in the world for whom this sad 
old man appeared to cherish any kindly regard 
was Mother Crow. Under the straggling boughs 
of an apple-tree he at length built her a house, a 
very goodly house for a gypsy, with a roof and door 
of pine planks ; albeit there were gaps between the 
logs of which it was composed more than wide 
enough for the moon to peep through and see what 
was going forward. Many a basket of bright ap- 



THE GYPSY FOKTUNE-TELLER. 49 

pies he bore to Mother Crow's house on his 
shoulder, and many a bag of corn he emptied on 
her broad clay hearth ; and once, at least, during 
every period of encampment, he might be seen 
leading thither by the horns a fat heifer or steer, 
and then be sure there was great feasting among 
the gypsies. 

It was noticeable that during the stay of these 
people the old man always became more like other 
men, that he would smile when he met his neigh- 
bors, and sometimes speak to them, not only cheer- 
fully, but with great good sense. 

It was strange his lucid intervals should al- 
ways occur at the time of the gypsies' encamp- 
ment, people used to say, but they never inquired 
into the mystery, for the world generally takes but 
little interest in its old crazy men that live in 
ruined houses. 

Scarcely a midnight came and went that did not 
find the crazy man by the gypsy's fire, bowing his 
white head beneath the skinny hand of the old for- 
tune-teller, and listening to her muttering, which 
contained always one and the same story ; and of 
course the story was all about the crazy man's 
wife and child, for she pretended that she could 
look back into the past and see what had hap- 
pened to them, and she commonly begun her story 
something after this fashion : — 



50 SNOW-BERRIES. 

"I see a beautiful river with a border of fine 
trees, and moonlight shining along the billows; 
I see herds of cattle grazing, and a great house 
with porches white as snow ; and now there comes 
to the porch a fair young woman, with curls down 
her shoulders bright as the sunshine, and eyes blue 
as a morning sky in May. She wanders toward 
the river-bank, leading by the hand a child like 
herself, but even more beautiful, — her eyes being 
like the color of the morning-glory, and the fingers 
fair as the fingers of a lily. 

" And now there leaps from his boat on the 
river wave a man, sleek and bright and stealthy 
as a leopard ; he approaches her with smiles and 
gentle words, but his feet are shod with evil, and 
his heart is full of all manner of dark things. Now 
he talks to her and his voice is soft and low as the 
voice of the wind when it talks to the violet ; and 
now he sings, and the song of the nightingale is 
not so sweet." 

At this point of the story the old woman would 
stop and tell her eager, trembling listener that she 
could not see any more until he had again crossed 
her palm with silver, and so having got more 
money she would go on. 

" All the scene that I lately saw is vanished, but 
I see the same woman walking in the fields alone. 
It is a wild windy night, and the clouds are flying 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 51 

across the face of the moon, and the autumn leaves 
are blowing about withered and dry, and still the 
woman walks on alone until she comes to a black- 
thorn-tree, under which, on a little heap of stones, 
sits a gypsy fortune-teller, — a wicked woman as I 
can see by her wolfish face, and her long, lithe, 
snake-like body ; and now she crosses the palm of 
this old hag with silver, and she tells her a tale 
that is like a fairy tale, of the splendid fortune 
that is waiting for her in a far-off country, — how 
she shall eat from plates of gold, sleep on a bed 
of swan's down, wear her hair braided up with 
diamonds, have gowns with hems embroidered 
with pearls, ride in a gilded coach, and have a 
hundred lovely maids of honor to be about her and 
to tend her day and night, and all just for going 
with the stranger who sings to her so sweetly, and 
who, she says, is a man of honor and authority in 
his own country. And the eyes of the fair woman 
are dazzled, and she seems almost persuaded to go 
away with the leopard-like man, and leave forever 
her comfortable home and her good husband." 

And here again, Mother Crow would pause in 
her story, and profess that she could not see any- 
thing more until she had more silver, and then she 
would say that she saw a boat sailing down the 
river, and seated within it three persons, a man 
and a woman and a child, and that the three 



52 SNOW-BERRIES. 

looked like the other three which she had seen 
before. 

Then the shadows would come between her and 
the boat, and her vision would grow dim, so she 
would say, and not till the old man had paid her 
more money could she see anything further. 

Sometimes she would sit for half an hour hold- 
ing out her rabit-skin cap, and not till she heard 
something clink in it would she speak one word. 
Then at last she would profess to see the beautiful 
woman sick and dying, and to see the child, grown 
to be a beautiful young girl now, standing by her 
bedside ; then she could see the eyes of the woman 
closed, and a long funeral procession ; and after 
this, no matter by what prices the crazy man 
sought to buy her vision, Mother Crow could see 
no further; though she always professed to be 
growing in prophetic wisdom, and quite sure that 
at the time of the full moon, or at the falling of 
the November rain, or at some other designated 
season, she should be able to trace further the his- 
tory of the young girl. 

And this was the secret of her power over the 
crazy man, as he was called ;' and by this means it 
was that the entire gypsy camp fared so well year 
after year. But the more liberal the old man was, 
the more the fortune-teller demanded ; and at last 
one night when the fumes of her bitter stew had 




THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 53 

gotten into her brain a little more than common, 
it may be, she professed to see the fate of the beau- 
tiful young girl. She saw that she was living in 
the castle of a nobleman, and that she was become 
a lovely woman, with golden hair and blue eyes 
like her mother's, and that she saw little shining 
letters along her forehead which spelled the name 
of Hesther. But in what castle Hesther was, and 
how she was to be obtained by the old man, she 
would not tell until twelve pots of rum had been 
ranged along her clay hearth, with a beehive full 
of new honey at their head. This request was no 
sooner complied with, however, than Mother Crow 
declared that her vision was become dim, and that 
the anxious inquirer must wait another day. Of 
course she had her way ; but, alas ! things turned 
out as she little expected. 

Having feasted to excess on the honey and rum, 
she lay down in her cabin to sleep, and feeling 
presently that the lease of her mercies was run out, 
and that the pains of death were hold of her, she 
called the old man back, and taking from her 
bosom the picture of his wife, she gave it into his 
hand, and also a piece of yellow parchment written 
over with clumsy and curious characters ; but the 
eyes of love can decipher hard things, and the old 
man read all the parchment contained, as if it had 
been written by a scribe. 



54 SNOW-BERRIES. 

Mother Crow watched him as he read, and at the 
close of the reading lifted up her hands and hid the 
light from her eyes, even before death hid it, and 
turned her face to the wall ; so fearful, sooner or 
later, are the effects of wrong-doing. 

It was all a lie that Mother Crow had been tell- 
ing the old man, after all. There had never been 
a man who was sweet-voiced and sleek and shining 
as a leopard, there had never been a little boat 
that rocked on the river of nights, and there had 
never been any running away, first or last. She 
herself had stolen the child in the hope of getting 
money from the father by telling him where it was, 
and how he could get it again ; but when it came 
to pass, as it did, that the mother pined for her 
child till she became crazy, and wandered away 
and was lost to her house and her husband, and to 
all who knew her, -she was afraid to say aught 
about the child lest she herself should be accused 
of murder. She was afraid even to keep it any 
longer, and pinning to its dress a paper that said 
it had been stolen and was to be given up if the 
father should ever come for it, or any one, bearing 
a certain parchment which the said paper men- 
tioned, she one dark night, having taken it a 
long way off, shut it up in a rich man's garden, 
where the gardener would be likely to hear its cries 
and take it to the rich man's house, as indeed he 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 55 

did, and here the girl had lived and was now 
grown to be a beautiful woman. She had meant 
always to tell the truth some time or other, but had 
put it off month after month and year after year, 
knowing that her palm would no more be crossed 
with silver by the old man if he once came to know 
where his child really was. And the story was 
never told until Death came and put her soul in 
torture that pressed the secret out of her lips. 

And the red leaves drifted in a red heap over the 
grave of Mother Crow, and the rain beat out the 
fires, and the pot of bitter herbs simmered no more, 
and the winter snow fell and lay in smooth curves 
about the stone house, for there was no name writ- 
ten on it now, and no crazy man anywhere to be 
seen. All the windows were dark as they could be, 
the fallen pillars lay one across another along the 
porches, and the chimney, in a stack of ruins, 
frowned from the roof, and at night not a sparkle 
was seen to rise above it. Now it was that the 
corpse of the old suspicion floated up on the stream 
of gossip again, more black and malignant than 
ever. 

The crazy man, in addition to his other crimes, 
it was asserted, had poisoned Mother Crow, and, 
lest they who saw him should murder him, had 
shut himself in his own house, and was slowly dy- 
ing of starvation and cold. Some even declared 



56 SNOW-BERRIES. 

that they could hear him making the night hideous 
by his hungry howls. 

But no man and no woman sought out the truth, 
or made one effort to alleviate the miserable con- 
dition of the old man. 

All at once, and as by magic, the stone house 
was transformed into its original grandeur ; the 
columns stood in white rows along the porches, the 
windows shone with curtains of crimson stuff, 
mixed with satin, white as snow, — the stack of 
ruins stood up in a high, proud chimney, and above 
it, at night, there glittered a shower of sparkles red 
as roses. 

And every day, riding along the river road, in a 
coach with shining panels, was seen the man that 
his neighbors called crazy when he walked along 
the road. Magnificent horses, in the most dazzling 
furniture, drew the carriage ; and by the man's 
side sat a lovely young woman, who folded his 
mantle tenderly about him with her sweet white 
hands. 

But the most marvellous thing I have to tell is 
the change that came to the hearts of the people 
when they saw the gold trappings of the horses, 
and the diamonds on the white hands of the young 
woman, — whose name was Hesther, and the er- 
mine that lined the mantle of the old man. The 
proudest of them bowed down as he went by, and 



THE GYPSY FORTUNE-TELLER. 57 

saluted him as though he had been a king, and 
his wisdom and beauty were the continual themes 
of conversation and admiration. The white hair 
and beard that used to be thought so frightful were 
considered regal now, and the austerity that used 
only to excite derision fitted him right royally now. 

In short, no man could be found to own he had 
ever believed the rich man to be crazy. On the 
contrary, every one was loud in the declaration 
that it had always been his belief that the owner of 
the stone house was some great person in disguise, 
and a very wise person too. And those who had 
affirmed most vehemently, when the stone house 
was ruinous and dark, that they could hear its 
crazy inmate howling with hunger, were the first 
to make feasts for him, and illuminations, now that 
his house was full of light, and his board beautiful 
and shining with plate. 

Not a soul could be found to own he had 
ever believed the rich man's well had a stone ox in 
it, and only one or two simple and old-fashioned 
old women would admit that they had ever heard 
the story. 

Every one who could afford it built a porch 
against his house ; white beards became the fash- 
ion, and the rich man's advice was asked upon the 
most trivial occasions. 

Thus ends the story of Mother Crow and the 

3* 



58 SNOW-BERRIES. 

Crazy Man, and I hope the reader has been taught 
by it two things, — first, that conscience will find 
out your sins, though you hide them under heaps 
of gold, mountain high ; and secondly, that those 
who make feasts for you and do you the humblest 
reverence while your mantle is lined with ermine, 
will be the first to cry out Crazy ! and see you 
starved if your chimney chances to tumble down. 



THE COW-BOY. 

DAY after day, when the tawny-bills 
Were twittering through the boughs, 
" Sook ! sook ! " across the sunset hills 
He would call his mother's cows. 

" Whee ! whee ! " and then the thrum and fall 

Of the clumsy meadow-bar, 
And we knew he had found them one and all, 

" Mottle," and " Rose," and " Star." 

A merry cry, and then a hush, 

And then a merrier ring, — 
He had found a bird's-nest in a bush, 

And was happier than a king. 



THE COW-BOY. 59 

" Plash and plash ! " and " Sook, sook ! " 

And tramp and trill again, — 
He had brought his cows across the brook, 

And was singing up the lane. 

Spingspang ! whish ! in the bucket cool 

And burnished silver-bright, 
And then he had gotten his milking-stool, 

And was milking with all his might. 

Clump! clatter! spinkle! span! 

He had done with the milking-chore, 
And was setting each shining and shallow pan 

On the watery " spring-house " floor. 

Days went and came, and came and went, 

And over the sunset hills 
No more his cheerful call was blent 

With the twittering tawny-bills. 

But in the dingle and in the dell \ 

Deep silence held the rule ; 
The little lad that we loved so well 

Was gone to the grammar-school. 

Years came and went, and went and came ; 

He had made, or mastered fate, 
For the little cow-boy's humble name 

Was the name that ruled the state. 



60 SNOW-BEREIES. 



LITTLE ELLIE. 

DARLING Little Ellie, 
Stout of heart and limb, — 
What, I often wonder, 

Will the future make of him ? 

Where will be the roses 

That keep his cheeks so red, 

When years with their temptations 
And trials shall have fled ? 

Stirring with the morning, 
As if he owned the farm ; 

On the floor at sunset, 
Sleeping on his arm : 

Torn and faded jacket, 

Feet brown and bare, 
Sunshine laughing in his eyes, 

And tangled in his hair. 

In his little bucket, 

Helping milk the cows, — 
Riding on the horses, 

Tumbling down the mows; 



LITTLE ELLIE. 61 



Wading in the water, 
Working mimic mills, — 

Chasing through the meadows, 
Rolling down the hills ; 

Making strings of elm-bark, 
Stealing mother's yarn, — 

All to see his kite fly 
Higher than the barn ; 

Planning long aforetime, 
With ambitious pride, 

How, when snow has fallen, 
He '11 have a sled and ride. 

Gravely puzzling over 
Each childish little plan, — 

Working, and tugging, 
And scheming like a man. 

Now upon grandfather's knee, 
Listening with delight 

To the stories that are new 
Every day and night. 

Now, with joyous make-believe 

In despite his frown, 
Turning chairs to railcars, 

And riding into town. 



62 SNOW-BEREIES. 

Ah, 't is wisely well for us 
That we cannot see 

What in years that are to come 
He will grow to be. 



THE BRICKMAKER'S BOY. 

THE ground of the brick-yard is burning and bare ; 
By the hedgerow are plenty of shady spots, 
But Ralph, when he gets a white apron to wear, 
Plays in the mortar, and shapes it to pots. 

That is his mother's house over the hill, 

With the pitcher of pinks in the window, so sweet, 

And Ralph is her darling, and sets at his will, 
In the soft bricks, the prints of his bare little feet. 

Poor soul ! — she is homely and wrinkled and old, 
And work is her portion, but what does she care 

For herself, since no neighbor has need to be told 
That her darling has beauty enough, and to spare ! 

Low down on the limbs of the prickly sweet-brier 
Are handfuls of roses, but still he will push 

His cheek through the thorns, for the one red as fire 
That grows out of reach at the top of the bush. 



THE BKICKMAKER'S BOY. 63 

. Sometimes the old brickmaker, sunburnt and bent, 
Will tug him about on his shoulder awhile, 
Whereat, growing restless instead of content, 
He scarcely repays the good man with a smile. 

He makes of a stray piece of cedar a shelf, 

Sometimes, where he sets up his pots in the sun, 

And then, growing vexed with his work or himself, 
He breaks them, and tramples them down, every one. 

From the time when the locust puts on the white mass 
Of his odorous plumes, till in summer's decay, 

His bright yellow jacket he throws on the grass 
And braves the bleak wind, he is busy each day. 

I know it is all in his own wilful way, 
Yet sigh, as I see him a-working so hard, 

His hands and his apron so heavy with clay 
He scarcely can toddle about in the yard. 

My heart often says to me, wherefore employ 
Your thoughts in a fashion so pitiful ? then, 

Reflecting, I see in the brickmaker's boy 
A type of the work and the wisdom of menr 



64 SNOW-BEERIES. 



FAIEY FOLK. 

THE story-books have told you 
Of the fairy-folk so nice, 
That make them leather aprons 

Of the ears of little mice, 
And wear the leaves of roses 

Like a cap upon their heads, 
And sleep at night on thistle-down, 
Instead of feather-beds ! 

These stories, too, have told you, 

No doubt to your surprise, 
That the fairies ride in coaches 

That are drawn by butterflies ; 
And come into your chambers, 

When you are locked in dreams, 
And right across your counterpanes 

Make bold to drive their teams ; 
And that they heap your pillows 

With their gifts of rings and pearls ; 
But do not heed such idle tales, 

My little boys and girls. 

There are no fairy folk that ride 

About the world at night, 
Who give you rings or other things 

To pay for doing right. 



LESS OK MOKE. 65 

But if you do to others what 

You 'd have them do to you, 
You '11 be as blest as if the best 

Of story-books were true. 



LESS OR MORE. 

SEVEN trees grew beside our door, — 
We used to wish they were six, or four ! 
Seven, — each standing so close to each, 
The boughs from one to the other could reach, 
And when the wild winds over them run 
The tops of the seven trees looked like one. 

There they stood in the rain and shine, 

Like so many soldiers, all of a line, 

Beating the tempest away when it came ; 

And still when the midsummer burned like a flame, 

Dropping their shadows, now less, now more, 

Over the door-stone and into the door. 

Seven, and one of the seven, an oak, 

Scarred and scathed by a lightning-stroke, 

That, leaving it at the fork gaped wide, 

Ran like a black vein down one side ; 

An elm, with a shaggy red vine at the top, 

Hanging loose, and as though it were ready to drop. 



66 SNOW-BERRIES. 

Three sweet silver maples, a willow so fair 

That like a lithe swimmer took hold of the air ; 

A walnut, too proud to yield ever a nut, 

With all its black bark into rough diamonds cut. 

And so there were seven — we wished they were four, 

Or six — we would have them be less or be more ! 

Fair every tree of them — why should we say 

If this one or that one were only away ! 

O, 't is no matter, — the story is meant 

To show you that mortals are never content, 

And if the trees had been six, or four, 

We still would have wished they were less, or more. 



FINE TALK. 

THEY may talk about talk 
With a silvery ring, 
But silence is sometimes 

An excellent thing. 
Of course there 's no statute 

To limit the breath, 
And he that so chooses 

May talk you to death ! 
But if you have nothing 

To tell or to teach, 
There 's no use abusing 

The good gift of speech ! 



FINE TALK. 67 

I ve heard tongues that clattered 

Like shallowest brooks, 
But never the fine talk 

You read of in books ! 
I often hear things 

That were tolerably good, 
But not your fine, fine talk, — 

I wish that I could ! 
For when words like music 

Have ravished the air, 
It somehow has happened 

I never was there. 

It is, as I fancy, 

The fault of my star, 
For certainly somewhere 

Fine talkers there are ; 
And sometimes I 've thought, 

For a minute or two, 
Here is one ! He was telling me 

All that he knew ! 
For when we next met, 

Without switching the train 
Of a thought, he repeated 

The same things again. 

And if I might venture 

One word to suggest 
To the talkers, who brilliantly 

Prey on the rest, 



68 SNOW-BERRIES. 

- I would tell theui that no one, 

So far as I 've heard, 
Likes always to listen 

And say not a word ; 
And that it were wisdom 

To ponder my rhyme, 
And utter their oracles 

One at a time ! 



PART III. 

THE WEAVEE'S DAUGHTEES. 



THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 

TN a poor little house that stood almost within 
-"- the shadow of a great monastery there lived 
once two sisters, named Agnes and Elthea, — or- 
phans, and heirs of nothing but an honest name 
and the trade of their parents, which was that of 
weaving. The elder, Agnes, had black hair, a 
pale face, hands that were never idle, and a tongue 
that was always still, except when it repeated pray- 
ers or when the prattle of Elthea provoked it to 
speech. 

Mirth ill becomes you, good sister, Agnes often 
said, with severe voice and frowning brow. Do not 
the bones of our parents moulder in the dust ? 
and have we not to earn our bread by our weav- 
ing ? and if we take time to laugh, what will be- 
come of the work ! 

Then Elthea would answer something after this 
fashion : " I know, my sister, that you are wise and 
I am simple ; I know too that our parents are 
dead, and that we are poor girls who must weave 
from morning till night to earn our food and our 
clothing ; but I cannot see that it is wicked to keep 



72 SNOW-BERRIES. 

the heart light just because the hands have to be 
busy, or for that other reason that our good father 
and mother have gone to a better world." 

And having said this, or something like it, she 
would try to separate the smiles from her rosy 
mouth, and would weave very quietly for five min- 
utes ; then, all unaware, she would break into 
mockery of the bird at the door side, and after her 
little song, ask Agnes how it happened that so often 
at nightfall the cloth in her loom measured the 
longer ! 

" Giddy child," Agnes would answer, with never 
a smile, " do you not know that the Devil helps his 
own ? " 

This was a dreadful thought, and, pondering it, 
Elthea would remain silent a whole half-hour some- 
times ; but in the end laugh again, and reply, " If 
it be as you say, good sister, I will sing while I 
may, for the breath I use in singing would not 
serve me to cool the fires a thousand years hence." 

" my poor sister ! " Agnes would sigh, moisten- 
ing the threads of her weaving with her tears ; and 
thus from day to day they sat at their looms, roses 
blooming in the cheeks of one, and wrinkles and 
pallor making the face of the other old before its 
time. 

At twilight Elthea went with their woven cloth 
to the neighboring convent, where it was embroid- 



THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 73 

ered by the sisters in patterns fine and beautiful 
enough for queens to wear. If it were summer, 
she plucked flowers on the way and made crowns 
for her golden hair, which she sometimes wished 
might be admired by eyes besides her own, as she 
bent her head over the still places along the brook. 

If Agnes could have seen how nicely she disposed 
the flowers, and with what vanity she broadened 
the golden bands of her hair, she would have 
frowned, even at her prayers ; but Elthea never 
wore home the flowers. She gave them to the brook, 
whose bright waters carried them lovingly away, 
and smoothed back the broad bands of her hair before 
crossing the threshold of the gloomy house, where, 
till her return, the firelight seemed afraid to shine. 

One night, as she was spreading the table with 
bread and grapes and milk, singing a song so low 
that it hardly came out of her heart, — a song that 
was half thanksgiving and half prayer, — the great 
bell of the monastery began to toll so solemnly that 
for a moment she grew pale, and crossed herself in 
silence ; for she had been born and reared in the 
faith that teaches men and women to believe there 
is some special virtue in the sign of the cross, and 
she had not learned that there is no virtue at all 
in the signs, or outward shows of things. No 
change came over the face of Agnes, and indeed 
her face was always so gloomy that it would have 



74 SNOW-BERRIES. 

been difficult for it to look gloomier than common, 
but her voice had in it some bitter gratification as 
she said she was glad to see her sister Elthea silent 
and sad for once ! 

It was only for a moment, however, that Elthea 
looked sad. " I was afraid some evil had fallen 
upon the land, at first," she said, " but I perceive 
by the peculiar tolling of the bell that it is not evil, 
but good that has befallen. And it is probably 
some sister of the convent that has passed from 
death into life " ; and so saying, she joined her little 
song where it had been broken off, and went on 
with her preparations for supper with a face as ten- 
derly bright as the tenderest and brightest of all 
the May mornings. 

" Hush ! " said Agnes, lifting up her hand ; " I 
hear the mountain wind coming angrily down ; the 
roof-tree shakes its last leaves off to battle with it. 
Saints, protect us ! it will be a fearful night ! " 

As she spoke the rain dashed against the roof as 
if a thunder-cloud emptied itself all at once. Then 
Agnes began to cry aloud, as a child that is lost in 
the dark ; but Elthea said : " God, who holds the 
whirlwinds in his hand, will keep us, and we shall 
not die. Why do you fear, my sister ? doth he not 
love us the same when to our weak vision the way 
of his providence seems dark ? " 

And still the bell tolled mournfully, the winds 



THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 75 

drove dismally, and the rain beat heavily. It was 
enough to make any soul afraid that could not draw 
light into the darkness from the sunshine of a past 
life of pious cheerfulness and resignation. 

" Have mercy on us, good saints ! " cried Agnes 
again and again, wringing her hands in dismay. 

" Our Father, we thank and bless thee for the 
fire that makes us warm, and for the roof that shel- 
ters us, and for our trust in thee that no storm can 
beat down," prayed Elthea. 

Directly, in a lull of the storm, there was heard 
a knocking at the door, and Elthea, smiling, made 
haste to open it ; for she said, " It is, perhaps, some 
poor wayfarer, whose life is mercifully given into 
our keeping." But Agnes reproved her with 
frowns, saying, " Stir not for your life ; it is some 
murderer who seeks our blood, or at best a robber 
who takes advantage of the storm." And when 
she saw that Elthea would not be hindered from 
opening the door, she hid herself in the darkest cor- 
ner of the house, under the cloth that was in her 
loom ; and her trembling shook the floor beneath 
Elthea' s feet, as her steady hand unlatched the door 
and set it open wide. 

" Now, all good saints and angels bless thee for 
the sake of thy sweet charity," said the stranger 
who stood waiting. " I dreamed not these rude 
hills held so fair a blossom. Thy goodness — for 1 



76 SNOW-BERRIES. 

am sure thou art good — shalt be my shield as well 
as thy roof. Bring me straight to thy royal mother, 
that I may kiss her hand." 

The youth and stranger had crossed the threshold 
as he spoke, and now stood waiting meekly before 
Elthea in the light of the burning fire. 

" You honor me above my deserts, gentle friend," 
replied Elthea, her confusion showing all the more 
for the blushes in which it tried to hide. " We 
are but poor girls, the children of weavers, and 
our parents are dead." 

" Children ? " repeated the stranger, turning his 
fair face toward the dark corners of the room ; " I 
see only thyself." 

Then Agnes came forth from beneath the cloth 
of the loom, and said, turning her dark face toward 
the stranger, " My sister, a giddy and thoughtless 
maiden as you may judge, has spoken truly. We 
are indeed poor, weaving all day long for our bread, 
which at the best is scanty enough" ; and she broke 
the small loaf in two pieces as she said this, and 
offering one piece to Elthea, began to eat the other, 
for she hoped to drive the stranger away by show- 
ing him that they had nothing to spare. 

But Elthea forgot her long fast, which she was 
used to keep all day, and remembering the stranger, 
who had been beaten by the rain, and must be 
tired and famished, she offered him what bread 
was left without tasting any. 



THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 77 

The stranger accepted the bread, bowing so low 
that all his golden locks fell down about his face ; 
and seeing what he did, Agnes not only frowned, 
but asked, in accents sharp and reproachful, how 
the poor could work without food. As she spoke, 
the piece of bread the stranger held seemed to 
grow into a whole loaf, and the part he gave back 
to Elthea was more than the whole she had given. 
And as they ate, the rain drove, and the wind 
blew, and the great bell of the monastery tolled 
and tolled. When Agnes spoke, she could hardly 
hear her own voice for the noise of the storm. 
Nevertheless, she said she believed the tempest 
had wellnigh ceased, and a favorable time was of- 
fered for wanderers, if any were abroad, to seek 
shelter in the neighboring convent. The stranger 
seemed not to hear or to understand her words, for 
he continued to eat his bread quietly as before. 
" Had we never so much charity," continued Ag- 
nes, " we could neither shelter nor lodge a way- 
farer, even though we knew him to be a pious 
priest, let alone a vagabond of a minstrel, such as 
are likeliest to trespass on the poor." 

Now the stranger wore the habit of a minstrel, 
and carried with him a harp, so that if he heard 
the words of Agnes he could not mistake their 
meaning. But he seemed not to hear her words. 
He seemed only to hear the tolling of the monas- 



78 SNOW-BERRIES. 

tery bell ; and as he listened, the tears filled his 
beautiful eyes, and ran silently down his cheeks. 
It seemed, indeed, as if the shadow of some great 
affliction were resting upon him. 

" Your tears will not be dried by remaining 
here," said Agnes, " for we are poor girls who have 
no comfort for ourselves, let alone for strangers, 
and we sell the kerchiefs we weave for our bread." 

But Elthea, when she heard this cruel speech, 
came softly between her sister and him, and in si- 
lence that was just as sweet as any spoken words, 
wiped his tears with her long golden hair. And 
directly the heart of the young man began to be 
lighter in his bosom, and he told the little maiden, 
as she strove to comfort him in her own gentle 
way, that the king who had ruled in his own coun- 
try for years and years, so wisely and so well that 
all his people loved him and came to him in the 
time of their sorrow as though he had been their 
own father and not the king, was now dead, — 
dead and gone, — and all the land was in mourn- 
ing, and all the bells of all the convents ringing 
dirges, and all the sisters singing funeral chants. 
Then he made a dark picture of the king's empty 
palace, and of the king's son, who in his grief had 
wandered to a strange country. 

" And what is all that to a poor minstrel like 
thee, or to the poor daughters of a weaver like 



THE WEAVEE'S DAUGHTERS. 79 

us ? " cried Agnes, her words dropping like icicles 
from her mouth. " The kings may all die and 
may all be buried, but can we leave our work to 
weep, though they were twice dead and twice 
buried ! " 

And having spoken these chiding words, she 
climbed into her loom again, and beckoned her 
sister to follow; but Elthea, who had a mind of 
her own, sat at the feet of the stranger and wept, 
saying, " The king was a good king and a lover of 
his people, doing in the land the things that were 
lovely and the things that were right, and it is a 
wise thing and a just thing to pause a little and 
ponder upon the life and upon the death of such 
an one." And the burden seemed lifted more and 
more from the young man's heart, for the words 
spoken by the gentle and kindly maiden. 

" my sister ! my foolish sister! " cried Agnes. 
" What is the king to you, whether he were good 
or bad, whether he be alive or dead ? " 

But Elthea, regardless of her sister's words, con- 
tinued to sit at the stranger's feet and to weep, 
and to speak words that were sweet and pleasant 
to him. And the wind blew and the bell tolled, 
and the rain beat against the house, but the mo- 
ments fled away as fast as the moments of a bright 
day in the middle of the summer. 

And as the firelight shone upon the young man, 



80 SNOW-BERRIES. 

and Agnes perceived that he was fair in the face, 
and that his locks were in their beauty like the 
locks of the morning, she grew only the more 
impatient and vexed and uncharitable toward 
him. 

"You may perceive how poor we are," she said, 
" and that we have but one bed, which cannot be 
divided"; and then going on more fretfully, she 
said that strolling minstrels, she supposed, were 
used to no better shelter than the oak-trees af- 
forded ; and as for the harp, the thought of it was 
displeasing to her, and she would gladly have it 
out of the house. " What is the good of music ? " 
she said. " Would it help us to weave the better, 
though we should listen to your harp till cock- 
crow ! " 

But the young man still sat contentedly by the 
fire, his eyes resting on the face of Elthea as though 
it had been the face of some delightful flower, and 
the glow of the coals made his beauty radiant, and 
his curling locks like the brightness of a day in the 
middle of summer. His milk-white hands were all 
sparkling with rings, and the weaver's daughters 
had never seen lace in their lives that was so fine 
as the ruffle he wore upon his neck. And seeing 
that he sat thus contented, and seeing the white- 
ness of his hands, and the glittering splendor of 
the rings that adorned them, Agnes, casting upon 



THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 81 

him a look of scorn, arose and dashed herself 
across the bed, and made a pretence of sleep ; but 
she did not sleep, you may be sure. Sleep is gen- 
tle, and comes not readily to the ungentle, the 
cold, and the hard. 

Then Elthea stirred the coals, and added fresh 
sticks of wood to the fire, and made all the low 
room, and the two clumsy looms, and the cloth 
that was in them, and the yarn that hung on the 
walls, to shine again, and bringing her shawl from 
the beam of her loom and the pillow from her bed, 
she spread them on the hearth for the stranger, 
saying how sorry she was that such scanty hospi- 
tality was all she could offer. And the young man 
thanked her with his eyes so kindly, and thanked 
her with his smile so brightly, that she went away, 
and resting her head on the cloth of her loom, 
slept never so sweetly in her life. 

And all night the rain beat, and the winds drove, 
and the bell of the convent tolled ; but at last the 
cold gray morning rose over the hill-tops, and the 
face of Agnes, as she left her pillow, was black with 
rage as the clouds, for there sat the stranger wait- 
ing to share the morning meal. In vain she scowled 
upon him : he would not be driven away, but 
leaning his cheek upon his harp, followed Elthea 
with his eyes, as she went about the humble room'; 
and she, still freely as before, divided her bread 

4* P 



82 SNOW-BERRIES. 

with him, and after that broke from her geranium 
all its pretty flowers and twined them about his 
harp ; for he was going to the monastery to sing 
dirges and to offer prayers for the rest of the dead 
king's soul. 

" The king was a good king, and he is dead," 
said the young man ; " and my faith teaches me to 
sing thus and to pray thus for the rest of his soul." 

And when he went away, Elthea asked the Lord 
to bless him ; and it seemed as if the blessing came 
back and rested upon her own head, for her heart 
had never been so full of peace as it was that day. 

" A pretty measure of cloth you will be likely to 
weave," said Agnes, flinging her shuttle across the 
warp so violently as to break her thread ; " the sun 
is an hour high, and be sure I shall not divide my 
bread with you for your folly ! " 

Elthea was thinking of the minstrel, and hardly 
heard what her ill-natured sister said. She was 
thinking, not so much of his beautiful locks, and 
not so much of his fair face, as she was thinking of 
his beautiful spirit, for it was that which made him 
seem so beautiful after all ; and as she thought, her 
fingers grew nimble, and her shuttle flew just as if 
it had wings, and the hours of the day seemed al- 
most like moments, and before she had dreamed 
of it, it was night, and her task was done ; and 
while Agnes still sat scolding and fretting over her 



THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 83 

unfinished work, she was away to the convent with 
her full measure of cloth. 

A long time she lingered, for the music of the 
choir had never sounded half so sweet : the miii- 
.strel was singing with the rest of them. 

Three days went by, and on the evening of each 
Elthea listened to the music of the choir, and the 
hour of her listening was like an hour taken out of 
heaven. 

It was an easy thing to weave now, for she . was 
weaving dreams while she wove her cloth, — dreams 
that stretched away and away, she knew not where. 

On the evening of the fourth day she missed the 
harp of her minstrel, and the convent seemed to 
her cold and gloomy, and all the world to be 
changed. And yet it was changed from clouds to 
sunshine, and from the moaning and beating of the 
winds to the chirping and singing of the birds, — 
the storm was broken up and gone, and the land 
was smiling again. She could not stay in the con- 
vent, but hurried away as fast as her feet could 
carry her ; and coming to the brook she sat down 
on the bank very sad, — it seemed to her as if her 
heart was being borne away in its waves. 

The waters that had leapt and prattled along the 
stones for the three days past were murmuring and 
moaning now ; the flowers that had seemed to be 
made of light now seemed to be made of shadows, 



84 " SNOW-BERRIES. 

or of something still darker than shadows ; the 
grass had lost its tender greenness, and the air its 
balm. Her very face must be changed, she thought, 
as well as everything else; and looking into the 
brook where the water lay still and mirror-like, 
she was startled to see there a face beside her own. 
It was that of the strange minstrel, who had fol- 
lowed her, and was peeping over her shoulder. 

With a cry of joy she turned to him, all her 
heart blushing in her cheek ; and then feeling that 
she had betrayed an interest deeper than a weav- 
er's daughter should feel for one whose hands were 
so much whiter than her own, she covered her face 
with her long loose hair, and stood silent and trem- 
bling before him. 

Placing his harp on the grass by the brookside, 
the minstrel seated himself a little way from where 
Elthea was ; and when the moon came up and 
looked, over the hill, she saw the minstrel kiss the 
hand of the weaver's daughter ; and then she hid 
her face in a cloud, for she thought it was not fair 
that she should look upon that which it was never 
meant she should see ; but when she had gotten 
over the hill and came nearer, she could not for 
the life of her help hearing what the minstrel was 
saying to the weaver's daughter, and the substance 
of what she heard was this. When he had laid his 
hand on her golden hair, he told her that if he had 



\ ^f/.Af'iAr,.] 




THE WEAVERS DAUGHTER. 



THE WEAVER'S DAUGHTERS. 85 

any riches except his harp, he would ask her to go 
with him to his own country, and to be his compan- 
ion always. 

But what cared Elthea for riches ? she knew 
how to weave, and it would be easy work weav- 
ing for him. And there, in the moonlight, they 
plighted everlasting love with manifold kisses. 

Many nights the bosom of the minstrel had been 
the pillow of Elthea, and many days they had trav- 
elled together, her feet bruised and tired, but her 
iieart running over with delight, and her lips sing- 
ing and prattling all the while, when toward sun- 
set one day they sat down by the wayside to rest. 
Then it was that the minstrel told his pretty wife 
another story, the marrow of which was, that he 
was no minstrel at all, except, indeed, for the sea- 
son of mourning for the king, his father ; for him- 
self was the king's son ; and the poor weaver girl, 
who had shared with him her bread and her fire- 
.de, was henceforth to share with him his broad 
and beautiful palace, and for the shelter she had 
given him from one storm, he would shelter her 
from all the storms of life. 

And Elthea was loved and honored by all her 
people as long as she lived, and many was the real 
minstrel that blessed her name, and sang songs in 
her praise ; and many was the embroidered train 
she wore that was made of the cloth she had woven 



86 SNOW-BERRIES. 

when a poor girl, and the cloudy days and the 
stormy days were always brightest with the bless- 
ing of memory. And to the end of her life Agnes 
wore coarse frocks, and wove cloth to make em- 
broideries that she never saw, fretting and scold- 
ing at her sister's good-fortune all the while, and 
spoiling before its time the beauty of a face that 
might have rivalled her sister's if she had suffered 
her heart to shine through it the same. 



THREE LITTLE WOMEN. 



THERE were three little women, 
Each fair in the face, 
And their laughter, like music, 

Filled all the green place, 
As they sat knitting talk with the 
Threads of their lace. 



Of the winds in the tree-tops, 
The flowers in the glen, — 

The birds, the brown robin, 
The wood-dove, the wren, — 

They talked, but their thoughts were 
Of three little men ! 



THREE LITTLE WOMEN. 87 

The sea lay before them, 

With ships going by ; 
Behind them the hills shone, 

So grand and so high ; 
And above them, blue beautiful 

Patches of sky. 

But they felt not the sweetness 

That smiled from the lea, 
And they knew not the way of 

The wind through the tree ; 
And they saw not the sea, 

"When they looked at the sea ! 

The wood-dove tapped note of the storm, 

The shy wren 
Twittered fearful, and low 

Hung the mist o'er the fen, 
But all that they thought of 

Was three little men ! 

The wind rose, the clouds gathered, 

Mass upon mass, 
The sun drew his long lines 

Of light from the grass, — 
Alas ! for the three little 

Women, alas ! 

Fast home ran the robin, 
Fast home flew the wren ; 



88 SNOW-BEERIES. 

The blacksnake led all his 

Black sons to the fen, 
That lay 'twixt the three 

Little women and men. 

The sky was all over 

One horrible frown ; 
The rain from the hill-tops 

In torrents dashed down, 
The three little short-sighted 

Women to drown. 

They died : pray their watery 

Graves may atone 
For their folly, in trusting 
• To see things alone 
Through the eyes of the 

Three little men, — not their own. 



PRETTY IS THAT PRETTY DOES. 

THE spider wears a plain brown dress, 
And she is a steady spinner ; 
To see her, quiet as a mouse 
Going about her silver house, 

You would never, never, never guess 
The way she gets her dinner ! 



ELIJAH AND I. 89 

She looks as if no thought of ill 

In all her life had stirred her, 
But while she moves with careful tread, 
And while she spins her silken thread, 

She is planning, planning, planning still 
The way to do some murder ! 

My child, who reads this simple lay 

With eyes down-dropt and tender, 
Remember the old proverb says 
That pretty is, which pretty does, 

And that worth does not go nor stay 
For poverty nor splendor. 

'T is not the house and not the dress 

That makes the saint or sinner. 
"To see the spider sit and spin, 
Shut with her walls of silver in, 

You would never, never, never guess 
The way she gets her dinner ! 



ELIJAH AND I. 

THE house that you see underneath the great pine, 
With walls that are painted and doors that are fine, 
And meadows and wheat-fields about it, is mine. 



90 SNOW-BERRIES. 

On the stony side-hill of the woodland close by, 
In a house that is not half so wide nor so high, 
Elijah, my miller, lives, richer than I. 

When I go to the town to pay tax on my land, 
He sits by the chimney, his book in his hand, 
And merry of heart as if money were sand. 

Of the meadows about him he owns not a rood, 
No stone of the brookside, no stick of the wood, 
Yet ne'er lacked Elijah for clothing or food. 

'T is good in his blue eyes the twinkle to see ; 
That the mill goes awry never troubles his glee ; 
'T is I that must pay for the mending, — not he. 

He laughs while I frown, and he sings while I sigh, 
The pleasant love-ditties of days that are by ; 
So Elijah, my miller, is richer than I. 



A FISHERMAN. 

A FISHERMAN leaned on a clapboard gate 
He was often used to pass ; 
'T was sunset, and two little boys 
Were playing on the grass. 



A FISHEKMAN. 91 

The watchdog by the door-stone sat, 

And bayed the rising moon, 
And the mother milked her cow and sung 

An old and pleasant tune. 

The children left their play and ran, 

And, leaning on her knee, 
She milked the milk into their mouths, 

Laughing with girlish glee. 

And as she carried her frothy pail 

Slow to the rustic door, 
One little one held at her skirt behind, 

And the other one before. 

She stopped, and hugging both their heads 

Against her loving breast, 
They looked like two bright little birds 

A-peeping from one nest. 

The sunburnt fisher went his way, 

Sighing, alas, alas ! 
It was not for the little boys 

That played upon the grass. 

And when he came where cold gray stones 

Were standing, many a pair, 
He put his net from his shoulder down, — 

His little boy was there. 



92 SNOW-BERRIES. 



AMY TO HER FLOWERS. 

MY lowly little beauties, 
Your time is coming on, — 
The meadows will be full of you 

Before a month is gone. 
I never knew your names, so near 

Your wild estate I grew, 
But would that you could be alive 
To feel my love for you. 

Full many a time the coverlets 

Of grass from off your beds 
I 've turned, my beauties, just to touch, 

With reverent hands, your heads. 
They called you simple country flowers, 

But what for that care I ? 
I loved you all the more because 

You were not proud and high ! 

We had our ways of naming you, — 

We children of the wood, — 
Red-slippers, lily-fingers, 

Queen's cap, and martyr's blood. 
The rustic flower, by virtue of 

A coat as brown as sand, 
And by the dew-drop shining 

Like a sickle in his hand. 



AMY TO HER FLOWERS. 93 

The crumply cow, — the little shrew 

In strange and sad attire, — 
Lover's tremble, old maid's thimble, — ■ 

Moon men, — miser's fire ; 
And one we used to gather 

When the millet land was ploughed, 
With little thin and ragged leaves, 

We called the beggar's shroud. 

The belle, — the lady leopard, — 

The sweetheart, — tender-eyed, — 
The spinner's gown, — the winter-frown, 

And many a one beside. 
And these, our untaught fancies, 

So much from nature grew, 
I do not care to call you 

By the names that others do. 

But O my little beauties, 

Of field and brook and brake, — 
The slender ones, — the tender ones, — 

I would, for my love's sake, 
I could take and make immortal, 

With the power of better lays, 
All your crooked little bodies 

That had never any praise. 



94 SNOW-BERRIES. 



AUTUMN THOUGHTS. 

WHEN frosts begin the leaves to blight, 
And winds to beat and blow, 
I think about a stormy night 
Of a winter long ago. 

The clouds that lay, when the sun went down, 

In a heap of blood-red bars, 
Turned, all at once, of a grayish brown, 

And ran across the stars. 

And the moon went out, and the wind fell low, - 

And in silence everywhere 
The fine and flinty flakes of snow 

Slipped slantwise down the air. 

Slipped slantwise down, more fast and fast, 

And larger grew amain, 
Till the long-armed brier-bush, at last, 

"Was like a ghost at the pane. 



A group of merry children we, 
As any house can show ; 

The very rafters rang with glee, 
That night, beneath the snow. 



AUTUMN THOUGHTS. 95 

The candle up and down we slid, 

To make our shadows tall ; 
And played at hide-and-seek, and hid 

"Where we were not hid at all. 

We heaped the logs against the cold, 

And made the chimney roar ; 
And told the stories we had told 

A thousand times before. 

"We ran our stock of riddles through, — 

Nor large, be sure, nor wise ; 
And guessed the answers that we knew, 

And feigned a glad surprise. 

But, in despite our frolic joys, 

That rang so wild and high, 
We wished, we foolish girls and boys, 

That time would faster fly. 

And years have come and gone since then ; 

And the children there at play, 
Are sober women, now, and men, 
With heads that are growing gray. 

But their hearts will never be so light, 

And their cheeks will never glow 
As they did upon that stormy night, 

In the garret rude and low. 



PART IV. 

THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 



^*. 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 

TflHERE once lived in a beautiful country, no 
JL matter just where, a young man whose name 
was David. From his boyhood he was given to 
idleness and to dreaming, so much so that he came 
to be called by those who knew him Davy Dreamer, 
and it was predicted of him that he would never 
come to any good. But he did come to some good ; 
he married a good wife, and a pretty one too. She 
was the daughter of a man as poor as himself, but 
she had habits of industry, and great good sense, 
which was a good deal better than a dowry of gold 
or silver ; and it was, no doubt, more owing to her 
management and hard work — for she was never 
idle — than to anything of his doing, that, at mid- 
dle life, Davy Dreamer owned a neat cottage and 
five acres of garden ground. Moreover, it is quite 
certain that not a flower-bush nor a sweet-scented 
herb grew on the little farm, if so it might be 
called, which was not of her planting. A woman 
who found no time for dreaming was the wife of 
David. Nevertheless, she was never heard to rate 
her good man for his indulgence in his favorite 



100 SNOW-BERRIES. 

pastime, and never seen to frown, and some per- 
sons believed it was her smiling which made her 
face so pretty. 

I said at middle life they owned a pretty cottage 
and a garden, which with careful cultivation would 
have yielded not only a competence, but many of 
the luxuries of life ; but I am sorry to record that 
David fell a-dreaming often, at which times the 
spade was sure to fall out of his hands, and as the 
pretty-faced woman who was his wife had tasks in 
the house to do, thistles grew up, and briers and 
rank grass choked the small vegetables quite down 
sometimes. 

As a natural consequence of this thriftlessness, 
their wants grew faster than the means of sup- 
plying them ; for the little house was full of chil- 
dren — I know not how many, but so many that 
David often desponded and said to his wife in a 
half-dreaming state, — that it was quite impossible 
for one little garden to maintain them all ; and so 
he would sit for hours musing and meditating on 
what could be done for the prevention of want, — 
of actual starvation in fact. 

" There will be some way provided, never fret," 
the good wife would answer ; " there are more 
berries ripe than I can get to the market" ; or, "I 
have found two new hen's nests, both full of white, 
fresh eggs," she would say to him, though most 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 101 

likely he heard her not, and often it is supposed 
he saw not the things which she did for his com- 
fort and for the good of his children; for when 
the cottage wall was newly whitewashed it was the 
same to him as before, apparently, and when a 
pudding was boiled for Sunday, or a plum-cake 
baked, David took them as matters of course, and 
ate them without seeming to distinguish them from 
coarse bread. 

If this were so, it was a pity ; but I am afraid it 
was so, for we have all of us seen Davy Dreamers 
who took the favors that were done them as mat- 
ters of course. We expect pigs to eat the acorns 
without looking up to see who thrashes them down ; 
but we have a right, I think, to expect a little 
more politeness of men and women. However, the 
sweet disposition of the wife of David could not be 
soured by any neglect on his part, and, indeed, as 
he grew impatient and fretful and fault-finding, 
she grew still more and more patient and gentle 
and loving, — more industrious and painstaking 
she could not have been. 

Sometimes, when she asked David to assist in 
digging the ground or in picking the berries, he 
would answer, " Don't disturb me now, my dear, 
I am making a great plan"; and so it often hap- 
pened that she picked and digged alone. ' 

At last, one day when the good woman came 



102 SNOW-BERRIES. 

home from market with some money in the bottom 
of a tow bag, which she had got in exchange for 
her fruits and such other articles as she had to 
sell, she ventured to ask David what he had been 
dreaming about. She had never been known to 
trouble him so much before, therefore it is reason- 
able to suppose that his vision had been unusually 
extended. 

"Why," said he, "I have been thinking that 
some of the rich folks about here might give us 
a cow and never miss her, and I am told there is 
a man living on the other side of the island " (it 
appears that David lived on an island) " the hills of 
whose farm are all covered with cattle. Now, if 
I go to him and tell him how poor we are, and 
how much one cow would be to us, do you not 
think he would give us one ? v 

But the wise woman saw no probability of such 
good fortune. It was barely possible, she said, but 
the experiment was not worth trying; and even if 
successful, the mortification of having been a beg- 
gar would imbitter the cow's milk. The wife of 
David, it would seem, had her own little pride, and 
in my opinion she was all the better for it. 

After this Davy Dreamer dreamed almost of 
nothing but cows, and when he talked it was all 
about the rich man at the other end of the island, 
who had meadows against meadows all dotted over 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 103 

with beautiful cattle. " He would never miss a 
cow ; and I dare say if he only knew of our poverty, 
he would gladly give us one ! " he used to say; and 
once or twice he hinted to his wife that she might 
go to him a-begging. But she only smiled and let 
him alone with Ins dreaming, for she thought it 
quite harmless. She had no idea of begging, how- 
ever, for her part, and for days and weeks and 
months worked on, and each return from the mar- 
ket town saw more and more silver money in the 
tow bag. She was never heard to complain, but 
often to sing, and often to discourse merrily with 
her children, who were growing to be blooming 
men and women. A nice little plan of her own 
had the wife of Davy the dreamer. 

Meantime, his head was filled with all sorts of 
vain imaginings. Night after night he would start 
up out of sleep, crying out, " Just see what a pail- 
ful ! " and morning after morning when he awoke 
he would peep into the garden to see if a cow were 
not browsing the cabbages. For hours and hours 
he would sit facing the highway, wasting the time 
that he should have used for working ; and never 
a stranger passed along but that he looked wist- 
fully after him, for each one he supposed to be the 
rich man from the other side of the island come to 
give him the cow. 

But morning after morning came and no cow 



104 SNOW-BERRIES. 

was found to be browsing in the garden, and 
stranger after stranger passed along, but if the 
"rich man from the other side of the island were 
among them he made no pause. And all the time 
he grew more and more fretful and dissatisfied. 
He fretted at his wife, and fretted at his children, 
and fretted at everything. 

" What is it troubles you, Davy ? " the good 
wife used to say ; but he would always answer, 
" Nothing, nothing ! " so short and cross that she 
was glad to leave him alone. And then, while he 
covered his face from the light and moped and 
moped, she would go forth into the sunshine and 
work and sing, and make the best of things, bad as 
they were. " Never mind what father does ! " she 
used to say to the children when they complained. 
" If father does n't help us, it is our place to get 
along without his help, that is all. We must none 
of us wait for another, nor depend on another, but 
each do his own work in the world, and do it 
cheerfully ; and then, let who will be at fault, we 
are not." 

" Your father will get over his delusions by and 
by," she would say, and she really had some rea- 
son for this hope : for at last he ceased to tell his 
dreams. But, alas ! if she had known it, it was 
not because he had ceased to dream. He did not 
tell them, because they were evil, that was all. If 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 105 

his wife would not hear of his begging, how much 
less would she hear of what he meant to do now ? 

It is probable that to his own mind he justified 
himself, for the mind must work just as the brook 
must run, else it grows dull and stagnant, and 
reflects nothing clearly; and it is an easy thing 
for those who do nothing but dream to let their 
dreams delude them at last. It is likely that he 
came to think he was not going to steal at all, 
but just to take what he had a right to. He was 
poor and wanted a cow, and the rich man on the 
other side of the island would not miss her ! That, 
I say, is likely the way he talked to himself, till he 
came to think stealing was no stealing at all. 

And while he was doing nothing but make his 
bad plans, his wife was working and saving, so 
that the tow bag had come to have a good deal of 
silver in it; and one bright morning in May, 
when Davy had been turning and twisting and 
groaning all night, she arose early, and having 
arrayed herself in her best gown and shawl, told 
him that she was going to the market town, but 
that she was not coming back by the direct road, 
and might not be home till midnight. " And you 
must not be frightened, Davy," she said, " if I 
should not be home till moonset. I am going to 
do something that will surprise you, I think." 
Davy expressed no curiosity about what she was 



106 SNOW-BEERIES. 

going to do, but he seemed wonderfully pleased 
that she was not coming home till midnight, and 
said a good deal to make it appear that the drive 
after nightfall would be much pleasanter than be- 
fore. 

She was surprised and a little disappointed at 
this, for she had hoped that he would miss her, 
and would, at least, ask her why she should be 
away so long ; but she could not but see that her 
absence would be agreeable to him. 

" Perhaps he is sick, and perhaps he is dreaming 
again," she said to herself by way of excusing him, 
and so kissed him and departed, but with a heart 
much less light than it would have been if he had 
said one loving word. 

The old clock in the corner had not counted 
many minutes after the wife was gone, till the hus- 
band, having hastily prepared himself, took his 
way to the other side of the island. 

He walked vigorously on, for the morning air 
was sweet, and a new project is apt to impart new 
energy. Gayly sung the blackbirds, hopping along 
the newly ploughed ground and up and down the 
fences, and the bluebirds twittered and fluttered 
almost in his face ; and it was not yet noon when 
he came to the other side of the island, and found 
that the rich man's possessions had not been over- 
estimated. Lying in the faint shadows of the trees 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 107 

there were cows ; standing knee-deep in the water 
of the brooks there were cows ; and grazing along 
the green, thick grass of the hills there were cows, 
— all with great udders, and looking so gentle and 
so pretty. He saw, too, the fine house in which the 
rich man lived ; it was not much like his cottage, 
and its splendor seemed to mock his poverty, so 
that he grew angry as well as discontented. 

There was no person in the field nor in sight, so 
that he might have driven one of the cows away 
quite safely, as it appeared ; but though he broke a 
goad from a thorn-tree for that purpose, something 
seemed to hold him back, and not until nightfall 
could he persuade himself to single one from the 
number and drive her away. But when at last 
the sun was down and the shadows began to dark- 
en, there came into the field the keeper of the 
cows and called them home to be milked ; and 
Davy, who had been waiting all day for this favor- 
ing hour, was half glad when he saw the coveted 
opportunity passing away. But it seems that when 
our hand is once lifted up to do evil, Satan stands 
ready to take it, and to lead us ; and what we call 
chance favored the man's bad designs. 

One of the cows, unmindful of the call of her 
master, stayed feeding along the hollow and was 
not missed among so many. Suddenly the clouds, 
which had been floating about during the day, 



108 SNOW- BERRIES. 

darkened together ; so that but for the white face 
of the cow, the old man could not have seen her a 
dozen yards away. Summoning .up all the resolu- 
tion of the growth of years, he drove her with the 
thorn-goad away from her own home. Many times 
he paused and listened, thinking he heard footsteps 
pursuing him ; and many times he hid in the 
thickets, for he thought voices called him to stop, 
and if the harmless cow but turned her face toward 
him and lowed, he almost shrieked aloud ; so trem- 
bling and listening, and framing lies to tell to his 
good wife when he should reach home, he crept 
slowly forward. 

Having fasted all day, he grew faint, and the un- 
accustomed exercise had made him tired, so that 
he resolved to rest for a time and drink some of the 
cow's milk, and at the rising of the moon, which 
he apprehended would scatter the clouds, go on 
refreshed. 

Under the shelter of a low-spreading beech, upon 
which the dead leaves of the last year hung thick, 
he stopped ; and taking a small but stout cord 
from his pocket, secured the cow, tying her by the 
horn to the trunk of the tree. She seemed very 
gentle and quiet, but, though he knew not why, he 
could not make up his mind to taste her milk, hun- 
gry and tired as he was ; so leaning against the 
tree, he resolved to wait the rising of the moon, 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 109 

and to take a nap meantime. But this resolve was 
much easier made than executed. Sleep would 
not come to him for any scolding or fretting, as his 
wife had always been used to do. It was not be- 
cause his bed was the ground, and not because his 
grass pillow could not be moved like his feather 
one at home, that he could not sleep, — though he 
tried to make himself believe so ; it was because 
he had done that which he should not have done 
that he could not sleep. 

It seemed to him that every step he heard was 
the step of some one coming to arrest him ; and 
his imagination made pictures of prison walls, of 
jailers, and of everything that was frightful to 
think of. The very moon seemed to look reproach- 
fully on him from the sky, and to say : " You are 
a thief, old man ! and you had better go and jump 
into the river, if you can't be an honest man ! " 

The corn-blades, as they rustled, seemed to him 
to be talking to him, and to say : " Have you ever 
made a cornstalk grow or an apple-tree bloom and 
bear ? have you planted a wheat-field or sown a 
meadow, or done anything else to help the world 
along, or to make it any the better for your having 
lived ? " In the leaves of the tree under which he 
was lying, the wind seemed to stop and to stay 
there, fretting and scolding ; he had always thought 
the wind murmured and sung before, but it cer- 



110 SNOW-BERRIES. 

tainly scolded now. The voice that used to whis- 
per in the leaves seemed now to be saying, " I am 
ashamed of you ! I am ashamed of you ! " over 
and over and over. Poor old man ! he was 
ashamed of himself, and that was why the wind 
took such a sound. 

Two crows alighted near by him, on the dead 
branch of an old tree, and though it was not the 
time for them to make a noise, being night, they 
set up a cry ; but instead of saying Caw ! caw ! as 
is the way of crows, they seemed to Davy to be 
saying Cow ! cow ! So that he concluded that 
they too knew what he had done. And more than 
this, he thought everybody would hear them, and 
the whole world would know of it. 

He wished he had never heard of the rich man ; 
he wished he had stayed at home and minded his 
own business, and never seen a cow, nor heard of 
a cow, nor thought of a cow ! but above all, he 
wished that he had not stolen a cow ! Sometimes 
he was almost persuaded to drive her back, turn 
her into her own green pasture, go home to his 
good wife and confess all the truth, and try to be a 
better man ; but it is hard to turn evidence against 
ourselves, and the man who has lied once will gen- 
erally tell forty other lies to conceal the one, rather 
than own the simple truth. I suppose a man never 
suffered more from the torment of conscience than 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. Ill 

Davy the Dreamer suffered as he lay there on the 
ground by the side of his cow. And yet she looked 
so beautiful as she stood there chewing the cud in 
the moonlight, he could not help the thought, now 
and then, that she would be a great delight to him 
if he once had her in his own pasture, and if he 
could be sure that no living mortal would ever 
know how he came by her ! But even this fancy 
did not quite satisfy him. " There is one person 
that will know," said he, " and that is myself ! 0, 
misery, misery ! if I could- only bribe my own 
thoughts to let me alone ! " But this Davy could 
not do, for no man ever could do it ; and feeling 
how impossible it was to have his own respect, to 
have anything but his own condemnation, he trem- 
bled and hid his face in the wild grass about him 
like a frightened beast. 

At last the full moon got over the trees and the 
hills and the low clouds, and in the clear sky shone 
out in full splendor. And with the beautiful light 
some part of his awful fear vanished ; and having 
listened, and hearing no step, and the crows being 
now still, he softly untied the cow and drove her 
homeward. He did not get on very far, however, 
before he found that he had lost his way. In the 
first place, he had never been from home, and did 
not know the roads ; and in the next, his mind was 
so full of terror as to bewilder him, and in fact 



112 SNOW-BERRIES. 

make him almost like a crazy man. He could not 
tell north from south, nor east from west, and when 
he came to where the roads forked, he could not 
for the life of him conclude which way to go. So 
he drove his cow into the woods, tied her to a tree, 
as before, and resolved to wait till morning. 

By and by the cow lay down among the dry 
leaves, and her deep quiet breathing, together with 
the security of the place, soothed Davy, so that he 
at length lay down beside her, and, nestled close to 
her speckled hide, fell asleep, and in his sleep he 
dreamed, and this was what he dreamed. 

It seemed to him that he got safely home with 
his cow, even to the garden gate. And that on 
looking up he saw that his house was burned down ; 
and while he stood in consternation, one of his 
neighbors met him and told him that his wife was 
dead of a broken heart, and that his children were 
some of them run away, and some of them in prison 
for stealing cows ! 

He awoke with a stifled cry in his heart, and sit- 
ting up, saw that it was daylight, and that the gray 
dew was lying all over his hair and clothes ; His 
limbs were stiff, and he was chilled through and 
through. 

A squirrel near by was chattering among the 
tangled roots of an old tree, and it seemed to Davy 
that he kept saying, " Good for you ! good for you ! 




THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 113 

good for you ! " So that it was alLthe same with 
him, whether asleep or awake there was no peace. 

When he tried to walk his legs dragged under 
him as if they were half asleep, and his mind was 
benumbed as well as his body ; but still it was 
filled with strange, crazy notions that tormented 
him cruelly. 

A little way from where he had passed the night 
there was a mossy stone sticking up out of the 
ground, three times as big as his head, and at one 
moment he was tempted to wrench this stone out 
of its place, and knock the cow on the head with 
it : if she were only dead, it seemed to him that that 
would make it as if he had not stolen her. 

Chilled, hungry, bewildered, half crazy, he knew 
not what to do, for he was just as much lost as he 
had been in the dark. Sometimes he thought he 
would go and give himself up as a thief ; still he 
did not, nor did he do anything else except stagger 
blindly about, and almost wish himself dead and 
buried under the dry leaves of the forest. 

By and by the cow got hungry too, and pulled 
at the rope with which she was tied, and lowed 
again and again ; so loud that Davy thought 
somebody would certainly hear her, and come 
and take her away, and himself too, with iron 
handcuffs on ! 

At length, he struck the cow in his rage because 



114 SNOW-BERRIES. 

she lowed so loud, and suddenly jerking at the rope 
with which she was tied, she broke it, and ran 
away. Now Davy no sooner saw her escaping from 
him than the old desire to have a cow for his own, 
to see her feeding in his garden, and his children 
drinking her milk, all came back upon him, and 
he hobbled after her as fast as he could go ; but 
such a wild-goose chase as she led him it is not 
worth while to describe. Through thistles, briers, 
and hedges, through woods and across meadows, 
and up and down hills, it seemed to Davy that he 
was being led to the end of the earth, and what 
was his surprise when toward nightfall, he found 
himself in the identical pasture field from which he 
had stolen the cow. If he had been afraid before, 
how much more was he afraid now ! 

He hid himself behind a stone-wall and waited 
for the night to fall, not daring even to lift up his 
head ; and when he saw the owner of the cows come 
to drive them home to be milked, he crouched down 
into the very earth. 

All the cattle seemed delighted that the estray 
was come back among them, and gathered round 
her and licked her sides and her neck and her 
forehead, and made little moans as though they 
were talking and telling how glad they were. 

" I shall never be able to divide her from her 
-mates," thought Davy ; and his heart sank down 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 115 

within him; for, in spite of all he had suffered, 
he was fully resolved to steal the cow over again. 
Again fortune favored him. When the owner of 
the cattle drove the others out of the meadow, he 
turned this one, the handsomest of all, back, and 
Davy heard him say to her, " What business have 
you here ? why don't you stay at home, you fool- 
ish creature ? " 

He could not quite tell what this meant ; per- 
haps some one had bought the cow, and that 
thought made him doubly anxious to have her. 
So, just as soon as the gray twilight crept along the 
meadows, he tied the cow by the horn and led her 
away. 

He was so weak by this time, with fasting, and 
the trouble he had had, that before he had trav- 
elled many miles he fell down, and could not go 
another step. He milked a little of the cow's milk 
in his hand, swallowed it, and then lay down to 
get a little further strength from sleep. But the 
sleep of a man who has stolen a cow is not refresh- 
ing, as you may well believe, and he arose in the 
morning chilled and cramped, and altogether in a 
worse condition than he had yet been. 

He was obliged to halt so often during that day, 
that night again fell while he was yet a long way 
from home. So for the third night he lodged in 
the woods, and it is altogether probable that the 



116 SNOW-BERRIES. 

crows and the squirrels talked to him just as they 
did before. Just as the sun was going down on 
the evening of the fourth day of his absence, he 
reached home and drove the cow in at the garden 
gate. His house was not burned down, as he had 
dreamed it was, but it was so changed that he 
hardly knew it. The front was all whitewashed, 
and there were curtains of scarlet stuff shining at 
the windows, and the grass had been dipt in the 
dooryard, some young trees set, and so many 
things done that Davy hardly knew it all for the 
same place. 

All at once, while he yet stood amazed, his chil- 
dren came running out with shining faces and 
sleek hair, and began to cry, " father, have you 
fetched her at last ! " and then to fondle and ca- 
ress the stolen cow as though she were an expected 
guest. 

He had just got inside and had latched the gate, 
when turning round he saw his wife coming forth 
to meet him, if, indeed, that smiling woman dressed 
so neatly in a new gown and cap was his wife. 
" Davy ! " she cries, as she takes his hand and 
kisses it ; " we began to be afraid the cow had run 
away with you ! " And then she asks him as she 
leads him into the house, if he doesn't think she 
has made a pretty good selection of a cow. Davy 
is so puzzled by all this that he does not know 



THE MAN WHO STOLE A COW. 117 

what to say, and least of all does lie know how 
to look in his wife's face, for he sees plainly that, 
however things are, she trusts him and believes 
in him with all her heart. After a time the light 
began to break in upon his brain. " Did you see 
the rich man at the other end of the island ? " she 
says ; and " 0, is n't it a beautiful place ? " and, 
" Did he tell you how much I paid for the cow ? I 
thought I would come home and surprise you with 
the good news ; but good news travels fast, and when 
I got home I found that you had already heard it, 
and was gone to fetch her. How good it was of 
you, to be sure ! " And so she ran on till Davy un- 
derstood it all. She had bought the identical cow 
he had stolen, the morning before he reached the 
rich man's meadows. He was no thief, after all, 
and nobody in the world could ever know his se- 
cret. At first he felt very happy, and skipped and 
danced about like a boy ; but this could not last 
with a wicked secret in his bosom, and he soon 
began to droop and to lose all appetite, especially 
for milk. 

The house had been all brightened up inside as 
well as out ; and besides the scarlet curtains, there 
was a new rag carpet and an easy-chair for him- 
self, and a good many other things ; but none nor 
all of them could give him pleasure, for all the 
time he knew himself to be a thief. One day his 



118 SNOW-BERRIES. 

wife said to him, " I thought, Davy, we were pre- 
paring such a happy surprise for you, while you 
were gone for the cow, but nothing seems to please 
you, and we did it all for you ! " 

Then Davy broke down, and crying like a boy, 
told his wife all the ugly truth ; and after that he 
had great pleasure in the new things, especially 
the easy-chair, and milk tasted sweet to him, and 
there was nowhere a happier family than that of 
Davy Dreamer, for he was cured of his dreaming. 



THE POTTER'S LUCK 



IT was the summer's prime, and all the court 
Were in the royal forest at their sport, 
Hunting the hare to please the merry king, 
Driving the game, and shooting on the wing ; 
Pages, and hounds, and troops of gentlemen 
With horns that rung the echoes from the glen ; 
Ladies and lords with plumes and scarlet cloaks, 
Sweeping across the shadows of the oaks. 



The while a potter, sitting by the way, 
Took in his hand a little piece of clay, 



THE POTTER'S LUCK. 119 

And from the habit of his life began 

To furbish it : he was a sad, sick man, 

Having at home three children, pinched and pale, — 

Is it a wonder that his heart should fail 

With such a trouble tugging at the strings ? 

This hunting pleasure of the merry king's 

"Was not for any man, as you will guess, 

Being so friendly with his own distress ; 

He knew not how to spend his holiday, 

But just to keep on working with the clay ! 



Well, as betwixt his palms the piece he rolled, 

A little zigzag stone that shined like gold 

Dropt out, and rested on his knee. Just then 

A lovely and sweet-hearted gentleman 

Broke through the bushes, — leapt the wall that stood 

About the outskirts of the royal wood, 

And saw the potter sitting thus alone, — 

Upon his knee the shining zigzag stone : 

And in his white hand took it, paying down 

On the poor potter's knee a silver crown ; 

Then leapt the wall and through the bushes sped. 

That night the potter came, with lightsome tread, 

Home to his house, and when he showed the crown, 

You would have thought the roof was coming down ! 

Such merry children it were good to see, — 

One at his shoulder, one on either knee ; 

And as a hand, brown as a leaf that 's dead, 

He laid upon each little golden head, 



120 SNOW-BERRIES. 

And told, with heart a-tremble in his tone, 
About the shining bit of zigzag stone, 
And all about the lovely gentleman, 
Who, breaking through the bushes of the glen, 
Leapt the great wall, and on his knee laid down — 
The Lord knew why, he said — the silver crown, 
His brown hands shook, his eyes with tears grew dim, 
That such grand luck should fall by chance to him. 

IV. 

Then she, the eldest, at his shoulder, said, 

Putting one fair, bare arm about his head, 

Her eyes bent down, her fingers pale and thin, 

Going so soft along his rough gray chin : 

" You say the Lord knows why such luck should fall ^ 

It seems to me, now, just no luck at all ! 

But for your working all the day alone 

Beside the royal wood, this precious stone 

Would not have fallen upon your knee, — nor then 

The silver crown of this fine gentleman ! 

To pay an honest debt is not so ill ; 

To earn the pay you get, is better still ! " 

And you who read the tale, I trust, agree 

The honor went where honor ought to be. 



A POET'S WALK. 121 



A POET'S WALK. 

ONCE his way a poet took 
Through a deep and dewy glen ; 
Write about me in your book ! 

Cried the redbreast, cried the wren. 

Twittering low from every bush, 
Chirping loud from every tree, 

Cried the pewet, cried the thrush, 
Cried the blackbird, write of me ! 

Sing about my eyes, my wings, — 
Mine is but a hum]ble boon, — 

So they cried, the silly things ! 
Crossing each the other's tune. 

But the poet, sign of grace 
Giving not by look or tone, 

Turned into a shady place, 
Where a daisy lived alone. 

All her modest shoulders hid 
In a veil of leaves of grass, 

Dropping either snowy lid 
Sat she still to see him pass. 
6 



122 SNOW-BERRIES. 

Then the poet, with a quill 

That some eager bird had shook 

Downward, all against her will, 
Wrote about her in his book. 



THE SNOW-FLOWER. 

THE fields were all one field of snow, 
The hedge was like a silver wall ; 
And when the March began to blow, 
And clouds to fill, and rain to fall, 
I wept that they should spoil it all. 

At first the flakes with flurrying whirl 

Hid from my eyes the rivulet, 
Lying crooked, like a seam of pearl 

Along some royal coverlet, — 

I stood, as I remember yet, 

With cheeks close-pressed against the pane, 
And saw the hedge's hidden brown 

Come out beneath the fretting rain ; 
And then I saw the wall go down, — 
My silver wall, and all was brown. 

And then, where all had been so white, 
As still the rain slid slant and slow, 



THE SNOW-FLOWER. 123 

Bushes and briers came out in sight, 
And spikes of reeds began to show, 
And then the knot-grass, black and low. 

One day, when March was at the close, 
The mild air balm, the sky serene, 

The fields that had been fields of snows, 
And, after, withered wastes, were seen 
With here and there some tender green ; 

That day my heart came sudden up 
With pleasure that was almost pain, — 

Being in the fields, I found a cup, 

Pure white, with just a blood-red vein 
Dashed round the edges, by the rain, — 

The rain, which I that wild March hour 

So foolishly had wept to see, 
Had shaped the snow into a flower, 

And thus had brought it back to me 

Sweeter than only snow could be. 



124 SNOW-BERRIES. 



EASY WORK. 

LITTLE children, be not crying ; 
You have easy work to do ; 
Look not upward for the flying 
Of the angels in the blue ; 

Look not for some great example, 
Such as deaths of martyrs give ; 

One command above is ample 
For the teaching you to live : 

So that you will find out roses 
Brighter than are by the brooks ; 

Poesy with sweeter closes 
Than are in the poet's books ; 

Friends to gently watch and tend you 
When your hours of pain go by, 

And at last their prayers to lend you, 
When your time has come to die. 

In your working, in your praying, 
In your actions, great or small, 

In your hearts keep Jesus' saying, — 
" Love each other " : this is all. 



COUEAGE. 125 



COURAGE. 

KNOWING the right and true, 
Let the world say to you 
Worst that it can : 
Answer despite the blame, 
Answer despite the shame, 
I'll not belie my name, — 
I '11 be a man ! 

Armed only with the right, 
Standing alone to fight 

Wrong, old as time, 
Holding up hands to God 
Over the rack and rod, — 
Over the crimson sod, 

That is sublime ! 

Monarchs of old, at will 
Parcelled the world, but still 

Crowns may be won : 
Yet there are piles to light, — 
Putting all fear to flight, 
Shouting for truth and right, 

Who will mount on ? 



PART V. 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 

JERRY MASON had been hoeing two long 
hours in the garden ; the earth was moist and 
black about the cabbages, the heavy gray leaves of 
which were lopping earthward to give their, as yet, 
soft hearts a better chance of maturing in the sun ; 
the red seamy leaves of the beets testified to the 
good .culture they had had, but as if they could not 
say it plainly enough, the beets themselves were 
come up half out of the ground to add their tes- 
timony, and the pale spiky tops of the onions stood 
up like soldiers in straight rows, saying, " Behold, 
there is not a weed among us." The tomatoes, 
bright with dew-drops and full of young fruit, gave 
out their pleasant odor most prodigally in payment 
for the care they had just received ; and some few 
flowers, common to be sure, — but what flower is 
not beautiful ? — opened bright and honest in the 
sunshine, causing Jerry to leave his work for a mo- 
ment, and, leaning on his hoe, contemplate their 
pinky and purple and yellow colors with an ecstasy 
of joy. He did not believe, for the moment, that 
the king's garden contained anything more de- 



132 SNOW-BEEEIES. 

lightful than did his mother's. But even if that 
were possible, he thought the king could not enjoy 
its beauties half so much as he, because his pleas- 
ure was more than half derived from the fact that 
himself had ploughed and sowed the garden, and 
that the fruits and flowers before him were his, as 
they could not have been if another than himself 
had done the work. The eyes of the simple see 
straight to the truth sometimes, when all the curi- 
ous speculations of the wise are at fault, and I am 
not sure but that Jerry was wise in feeling that 
the king could not be so happy as he. 

He did not think of his bare feet half buried in 
the loose earth ; he did not think of his patched 
trousers, and that his shirt was not linen in the 
wristbands and collar even ; and for a minute, at 
least, he did not think how hot the sun was shin- 
ing down upon him, and how tired he was. 

" Jerry ! " called his mother, leaning from the 
low window of her little house, — " Jerry, my child, 
you may as well go and feed the old sitting goose, 
and the change of work will rest you." 

" Yes, mother," answered Jerry ; and as he took 
off his hat and wiped his face, he looked across the 
field where Henry Gordon was idly flying his kite, 
and almost envied him : he was a rich man's son, 
and neither had to hoe nor to feed an old goose. 

But Jerry was too good, and too happy, for the 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 133 

most part, to envy any one long, and directly, hang- 
ing his hoe in the fork of a tree that stood by the gar- 
den gate, he prepared the accustomed food, crossed 
the barn-yard where the hens were cackling and 
picking the grains from the chaff that was scat- 
tered about, passed along the field where the cow 
was nibbling the short grass, went over the brook 
on a bridge of stones he had built the last summer, 
climbed the slope beyond, and suddenly stood still. 
The old goose sitting in the hollow of a black stump 
close by was protruding her neck, flopping her 
wings, and hissing at a terrible rate. " You are 
crazy, ain't you, you ugly old goose ! " exclaimed 
Jerry, raising up and clinching one hand as if he 
would hit her if he had anything with which to do 
it. " Do you think I am afraid of you ? Why I 
have milked our cow on the wrong side, been all 
the way to mill for mother, and besides that, have 
killed two garter-snakes, — one of them half a yard 
long and striped and checked like a ribbon — 
Shut up your wings, you old — whew ! " and Jerry 
climbed to the top of a neighboring stump and 
shouted at the top of his voice, — cutting circles in 
the air with his hat, and beckoning with his hand 
in great earnestness. Farmer Hix stopped his 
team in the adjoining field and listened, thinking 
Jerry was shouting for help. Mrs. Mason put her 
head out of the back door ; she, too, had heard 



134 SNOW-BERRIES. 

Jerry, and feared some bad accident had happened. 
A moment the farmer stood still, his horses turn- 
ing their heads in the direction of the call, and the 
mother leaned and listened in trembling anxiety ; 
but the door closed presently, and the farmer 
ploughed on again : both had heard Jerry say to 
Henry Gordon, who was seen running with his 
kite across the field, " Don't you think, our old 
goose has got goslings ! " 

That was enough to make any boy climb to the 
top of a stump and shout for joy, Jerry thought. 
How many she had he did not know, but he would 
not be surprised to find that every egg was 
hatched, — three of the golden little creatures he 
saw, he is sure, and if the old goose would only 
come off the nest he could soon tell ; he would dare 
get a stick and drive her off, but he thinks he 
won't. 

" What is it ! what is it ! " cries Henry Gordon, 
running as fast as he can, and quite regardless of 
the kite that drags along the ground as he runs. 
"What is it ! have you found a bag of gold ? " 

He is older by two or three years than Jerry, 
and wears much finer clothes, but he is not a finer 
looking boy, for all that. His boots are of the 
finest leather, and polished very bright, — brighter 
than Jerry's best ones, which he only wears of Sun- 
days, which hang over a peg at the head of his bed 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 135 

in his mother's garret ; and his hat is so fresh and 
new, and the ends of the green ribbon tied aronnd 
it flutter so gayly, that Jerry is abashed for a mo- 
ment, and says he fears Henry will not be paid for 
having run so fast, and especially if he has spoiled 
his fine kite into the bargain ; that he has not any- 
thing worth showing, — some little goslings, that 
is all. But Henry has never seen a gosling, for it 
is only lately that he has come from a great city ; 
and he says the old kite is of no value, he can get 
as many better ones as he pleases ; he rather 
hopes it is spoiled, and so by its string he winds it 
up to him, and, tossing it at the feet of Jerry, be- 
stows it on him in a patronizing sort of way that 
would have offended him if he had not felt in his 
heart that he was equal to any boy anywhere. 

When the goose had been fed, and the goslings 
too, Jerry showed his new friend the stone bridge 
across the brook, which bridge, both concluded, 
might be greatly beautified and improved if they 
would unite their strength and ingenuity and give 
a day to the work. He showed him his mother's 
cow, and assured him that he dare plat her tail to- 
gether, count the rings on her horns, or even go 
up to her on the " wrong side " ! 

Then they went to the cow-shed where the straw 
was in which the hens made their nests, and after 
this to the garden, where Henry pulled some of the 



136 SNOW-BERRIES. 

finest flowers for his little neighbor. When it was 
dinner-time and Jerry's mother called him, his 
young friend went into the house with him, and 
partook, with great relish, of the simple meal that 
was spread. 

When he went away he invited Jerry to come to 
his house and ride his horse, and go gunning with 
him, which Jerry felt would be a great delight to 
him to do, and which he afterward did many times ; 
for from that day Henry and Jerry were excellent 
friends, working and playing together a great deal. 
The rich man's son soon lost a good deal of the fool- 
ish pretension he had at first, and what he did not 
lose Jerry readily forgave. Sometimes, indeed, he 
would throw off his coat and strip away shoes and 
stockings, and enter with hearty good-will into 
whatever was to be done. They went together to 
the same school, for there was but one in the 
neighborhood, and once or twice had hats and jack- 
ets alike. They gathered nuts together, and ber- 
ries ; made hay together, and picked apples ; 
shouted, and sung, and made whistles, and drove 
the cows home one with another. Then, too, O 
idle dreaming ! they made plans for the years to 
come, — plans of what they would do when they 
were men. They would always be neighbors, and 
divide whatever they had, just as they did their gos- 
lings and hollyhocks now. 



THE CHARMED MONEY, 137 

" Why don't you come to see my mother ? " 
said Henry often to Mrs. Mason, for he could not 
see why the mothers of such friends should not be 
friends too. And Mrs. Mason always said she 
would like to do so if she could get time, but some- 
how it happened that she never did find time, and 
never went. Mrs. Gordon rode in her fine carriage 
to a fine church on Sundays, and wore a silk gown 
and her hair in curls. Mrs. Mason put her hair 
plainly under a plain cap, and walked across the 
meadow to the school-house to attend service. Mrs. 
Gordon dined sumptuously at five, Mrs. Mason 
simply at twelve ; one lived in a big house and was 
served by a good many maids and men, the other 
in a very small house serving herself ; the one saw 
the sun shine through a lace curtain, and the other 
through rose-vines. So it was that Mrs. Gordon 
said, " Thank you, my dear, it will give me the 
greatest pleasure when I have an hour to spare," 
in answer to Jerry's invitation of, " You must 
come and see my mother." And so it happened 
that she never found an hour to spare, and never 
went to see Jerry's mother. 

Three years went by of the closest friendship be- 
tween the lads, and all this time they did not un- 
derstand exactly why their mothers could not find 
time to visit each other. It was the greatest pleas- 
ure to Henry to go with bare feet across the nicely 



138 SNOW-BERKIES. 

scoured floor of Mrs. Mason, and to sit with her 
and Jerry, where the roses looked in at the win- 
dow, and partake of her home-made cakes and 
bread, and eat her preserved fruits, which were 
never so good at home ; the wind came in so fresh 
and sweet from the hay-field beyond the hollow, 
and the birds made such music in the garden, and 
Mrs. Mason had such a sweet voice and a pleasant 
way, his mother would be delighted, he was sure, 
if she could only find time to come to the cottage. 
Mrs. Mason sat by the fire waiting for Jerry, 
who had gone to carry a fine yellow pumpkin of 
his own raising to Henry's mother, that Henry 
might have some just such pies as he was to have, 
— sat rocking and musing before the bright wood- 
fire, wishing somebody would come in and cheer 
the lonesomeness a little, for the night was falling 
and the snow lay cold and smooth everywhere, far 
as she could see. The straw-roofed shed of the 
cow was beautified like a queen's chamber. No 
king could put such a roof on his house as the 
snow had put on that. The fences seemed made 
of pieces of snow, the trees to be trees of snow, 
and all so still and cold. The cock went early to 
bed, fluttering the white shower from the limb of 
the tree that lodged him, — fluttering it down as 
though he did not care for it at all, and turning his 
bright eyes to his mates that sat beside him, sober 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 139 

and uncomfortable enough. He was rather glad, 
for his part, that so cold and snowy a night was 
come ; it brought out his gallantry and his forti- 
tude. But generally the aspect of things without, 
in spite of all the beauty, was cheerless. The tea, 
in the old teapot cracked and bound with hoops of 
tin, had been simmering a good while, the fire be- 
gan to make a little red light on the snow beneath 
the window, and a candle to be needed in the dim 
room where Jerry's mother sat, when she heard 
the creaking of the gate, and, rising, looked out of 
the window. It was growing quite dusky ; and 
though she saw two boys coming toward the door, 
she could not at first believe it was Jerry and 
Henry, so quietly they came, arm in arm, and talk- 
ing so low and so earnestly. What could it mean ? 
Of all times this was the one to make them merry, 
for there is more exhilaration in snow than in wine, 
and birds and boys are alike fond of dipping into 
it, and chirping and chattering when it lies over 
the ground loose and white. Close came the 
young friends past rose-bushes and lilacs all 
wrapped so prettily, and never once did they turn 
to look or dash the white weights from the bending 
twigs. Nor did they step aside from the open path 
and break their way, ploughing off snow-furrows as 
they came, as boys love to do. No merry voices 
rang through the clear silence ; but soberly and 



140 SNOW-BERRIES. 

straightforward they came, as if the snow had 
buried beneath it some great joy. 

And so, indeed, it had. They were about to be 
separated for a long, long while. It had been de- 
cided at home that Henry should go away to a mil- 
itary school, not to come home for six months, 
or it might be for a year. 

Jerry's mother was sad enough when she heard 
the news ; and to keep the moisture from gathering 
to drops in her eyes, she rubbed the tin hoops of 
her blue teapot with the towel, till they shone 



Henry said he was sorry he was to go ; but for 
all of his saying so, he was not as sorry as Jerry 
was. He had new boots and a new coat and hat, 
and a number of other things of which he was fully 
conscious all the while. Then, too, he would write 
every day, and it would be almost the same as see- 
ing him, and he would come home often, for Henry 
had been used to having his own way, and could 
not think but that his will would still be his law, 
as it always had been. 

The next day Jerry climbed to the top of the 
gate-post, and watched the carriage that took Henry 
from him drive away. Through tears he caught 
a glimpse of his little friend, but his little friend 
did not once look toward him. 

That was Jerry's first sorrow. No number of 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 141 

yellow goslings could have brought the old light 
into his red eyes that morning ; no pinks nor 
daffodils, though the garden had been full of them, 
could have seemed to him bright as the smile of 
his playmate. 

A letter was promised him by the first mail ; and 
all the interval seemed to Jerry a blank, a time of 
nothing, that he would be glad to push right along 
and have done with. It would not be seeing his 
friend, but it would be something ; it would be a 
great thing : he had never received a letter in 
his life, sealed and meant all for him. He won- 
dered how it would begin and how it would end, 
and what, in fact, his friend would say, and how he 
would say it. One thing would be in it, that he 
knew, that Henry was very lonesome and wanted 
to see him so bad. That would be in the letter, 
and he was not sure but that it would be in it a 
great many times ; indeed, it Was not unlikely the 
entire letter would be made up of love for him and 
anxiety to see him. Henry knew so much and 
would have learned so much, even in three days, 
at a military school, that he supposed the letter 
would be a model, — and what an advantage to 
him to have such a fine friend ! 

And at last the day on which the mail was ex- - 
pected was come, and at last it went by and was 
time to go to the post-office, two miles from his 



142 SNOW-BERRIES. 

mother's house. The snow was deep and it was 
cold after sunset, but little cared Jerry for that ; 
he would run because he could not help it, and 
that would keep him warm ; and, besides, if a boy 
thought much of a boy and wrote him so, he would 
feel bad to know a boy did not think enough of a 
boy to go after the letter, because it was a little 
cold. So buttoning the old coat that was outgrown 
and a good deal worn, Jerry set out, never mind- 
ing the still air that almost cut his face, as if it 
tried to thrust him back into the warm' house, 
never minding the white, cold glimmer of the stars 
that seemed to say, " It's no use," never minding 
anything, because he was a boy that liked a boy, 
and supposed a boy liked him back just as well. 
He was not long in walking the two miles. He 
did not once think he might have gone faster and 
with more comfort if Mrs. Gordon had offered 
him Henry's pony to ride, when she asked him 
to bring her letters. He did not think of any- 
thing but the pleasure he would have in breaking 
the seal and reading to his mother every word 
Henry wrote. The two miles were a good deal 
longer when Jerry went home, not because he was 
going home, and not because it was more up hill ; 
it was a good deal colder, too, and his coat seemed 
thinner ; it nearly froze his hand to carry the bun- 
dle of letters and papers for Mrs. Gordon, and the 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 143 

sharp wind brought the water to his eyes, — he 
had no letter from Henry. An ugly distrust came 
into his heart as he went along, — the moon might 
drop right down out of the sky, for all he knew, 
and he hardly thought it unlikely that his mother 
should have set fire to the house and run away 
while he was gone. If it was possible that Henry 
could have broken his " word and honor," his 
" double word and honor," what might not be pos- 
sible ? 

Henry was not sick, for there, in a fair, firm hand, 
was a letter to his .parents. 

He could not stop and ask Mrs. Gordon if Henry 
were well ; something choked him, and he must go 
home. 

An hour he sat on a stool in the corner and 
cried, in spite of all his mother could say to 
soothe him ; but at last when she told him to 
wipe his eyes and run over to Mrs. Gordon's and 
see what was in Henry's letter, he stifled his sobs 
and obeyed. 

Mrs. Gordon looked up from her reading as Jer- 
ry came in, in a way that said plainly she was sur- 
prised and annoyed ; and when little Fanny Gordon 
ran from listening at her mother's knee and offered 
Jerry a chair at the fireside, she shook her head at 
the little girl, and whispered something which Jer- 
ry thought meant she must not ask him to sit 



144 SNOW-BEKEIES. 

down. Fanny half hid her face in her mother's 
lap ; but she turned her eyes full of tears and sweet 
pity toward Jerry, and the frown of the mother 
lost its power on him, and for a moment he scarcely 
cared whether Henry had said anything about him 
or not. 

Every mail day all the winter, whether it were 
gusty or mild, freezing or thawing, Jerry went reg- 
ularly to the post-office, but there was never any 
letter for him. Once little Fanny had spoken to 
him through the fence, and told him that her 
brother Henry had written to know what he was 
doing now-a-days, and said that he should write to 
him as soon as he found time. She said, too, that 
when she went away to school, as she was to do in the 
spring, she would write a letter to him, and she 
would not tell her mother nor anybody else what 
she wrote. 

After this Jerry tried to make excuses for 
Henry, — he was very busy, no doubt, and had as 
many letters to write home as he could find time to 
do ; and as he worked, spading the garden, he often 
tried to work out a letter in his brain. But he 
could not tell very well how to begin, nor how to 
end, nor what to say, — a boy in a military school 
might not feel much like a boy spading in his 
mother's garden. 

The old goose brought out her troop of young 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 145 

goslings again ; the flowers all looked over the gar- 
den fence toward " Fanny's house," as Jerry fan- 
cied ; the heads of the cabbages were hardening, 
and their great gray leaves lopping toward the 
ground again. Jerry could not go to school now 
as he used to do when he was smaller, but had to 
stay at home and work. Fanny was gone away to 
school now, and had kept her promise and written 
a letter to Jerry, — a very little letter made up of 
very little sentences, and with a superscription that 
made three very crooked lines all across and across 
the envelope. To Jerry's thinking, however, there 
never was a much better letter written. All the 
time he kept it in his pocket, reading it again and 
again as often as he found leisure, though he knew 
every word from first to last. He could not bear 
to put it away with his few books ; it seemed like 
a free ticket to the good-will of everybody ; so he 
kept it, as I said, all the time in his pocket. He 
found the distrust that he had had in his heart 
since Henry went away growing rapidly less, and 
now and then he suspected that he had been very 
wicked in imagining the moon could fall, or his 
mother burn up the house and run away. Sud- 
denly he stopped from his working, tired, but look- 
ing well pleased ; he had been very industrious and 
done a full day's work, though it wanted yet three 
hours of night. He had made up his mind to 



146 SNOW-BEREIES. 

write to Henry ; for since Fanny had written him, 
" I am very well ; I hope you are very well. I 
don't like here so well as home. Do your gos- 
lings groW ? Have you heard from Henry?" he 
had felt that everybody he knew liked him, and 
would be glad to know how well he was doing. 
So the happiness he thought he should give to 
another was all bright in his face as he hung his 
hoe in the pear-tree, and breaking three cabbage- 
leaves, not crooked and deep green, but fair and 
gray with bloom, made his way to the brookside, 
where the shadow of a maple lay thick and cool, 
and near where the stone bridge caused the water 
to stop and make some silver talk before it went 
over. 

From the cherry-tree by the door he had brought 
some little withes, and having sharpened them with 
his teeth, began the composition of a letter, — using 
his hat-crown for a desk, the cabbage-leaves for 
paper, and the twigs for pens. Never was poet 
wrapped more happily in a dream than he in his 
work, when all at once he became conscious of 
footsteps and heard a voice, not unfamiliar, except 
in its derision, say, " Ha, boy ! I say you ought to 
take out a patent for that sort of paper : how are 
you, though ? " Jerry's senses were a good deal 
bewildered, and he could not believe at first it was 
Henry Gordon who stood before him, resting his 




THE CHARMED MONEY. 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 147 

polished gun on the ground, holding a cigar in one 
hand, and surveying him with such cool indiffer- 
ence. 

He tried to rise and return civilly the rude salu- 
tation of the young cadet ; and as he advanced he 
saw that Henry was not alone, hut accompanied 
by a youth whom he introduced as a classmate, 
naming Jerry as a boy he used to know ; asking 
Jerry how things were getting on in his line, and 
saying that, as regarded himself, he hoped his soul 
had got a little above potatoes during his absence. 
He did not speak even of Jerry's mother, who had 
done him so many favors ; and to complete the in- 
sult, he tossed at Jerry, as he passed along, a small 
piece of money, saying, " Take that, boy, and buy 
you a copy-book and a pen or two." 

Jerry did not speak ; he felt as if he could never 
speak again ; he could hardly persuade himself 
that it was indeed Henry Gordon who had stood 
but now before him, and as long as he could see 
gazed the way he was going. The very buttons of 
his coat seemed to mock him with their shining ; 
and there lay the money on the ground at his feet, 
and the cabbage-leaves wilting in the sun, for 
where the shadow had been an hour ago the sun 
shone hot enough now. 

All the world was changed, and it seemed for a 
little while not only possible, but highly probable, 



148 SNOW-BEEEIES. 

that his mother might set fire to the house and run 
away, and the moon drop out of the sky ; if any- 
thing could stay back such events, it would be the 
letter from Fanny. He put his hand in his pocket, 
to be sure that it was still there ; and, stooping, 
picked up the piece of money and placed it in the 
opposite pocket, to keep balance. Fanny's letter 
should teach him the world was not all bad ; that 
piece of money, that it was not all good. In itself 
it was but a harmless piece of money, and he would 
not have known it from a thousand others, 
but it had been in contact with the hand that 
shrunk away from him ; it had been flung at him 
in charity, — at him a boy as good as any other 
boy, as honest and as honorable. In all respects 
he was not Henry's equal, to be sure, but he would 
set to work that very day and make himself so. If 
he had not had Henry's advantages, neither had 
Henry had his ! And straight he set out for home. 
His heart misgave him almost when he reached 
the door and saw the tea-table spread in holiday 
style, and for three. Mrs. Mason had learned that 
Henry was come home, and was thinking what a 
pleasant time they would all have once more. It 
was hard to tell his good dear mother that he had 
already seen Henry, and how he had seen him. 
More than once, as they sat together, Jerry's 
mother arose from the table to attend some little 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 149 

duty, she said, but in truth it was to dry her eyes ; 
and more than once Jerry said he did not care 
what Henry Gordon thought of him ; but his 
mother knew it was because he cared a great deal 
that he said so. 

Already his mind was stung into activity, and a 
development was going on, of which he was not 
himself aware. 

Years of persevering endeavor, of hard work 
with the hands and harder with the brain, we pass 
by, — years in which hope has been busy with him, 
so busy that he has felt the steep way they have 
climbed together less toilsome. Teachers and 
schools have not been accessible to him much, ex- 
cept, indeed, the common school of humanity and 
the great teacher, God, in his works. These 
works he has read and reread ; these he has stud- 
ied, and he has studied himself, and his duties to 
himself and his fellows. He feels the nobility of 
true and honest manhood, afraid of nothing but 
doing wrong, ambitious of nothing but coining the 
ability with which he has been endowed to right 
use. For he is not ambitious to serve the world 
nor the state, — measured against such great re- 
quirements he feels unequal ; he is content with 
making even a little spot of earth greener for his 
having lived ; he thinks it something of an achieve- 
ment to turn weeds into good rich soil, and make 



150 SNOW-BERRIES. 

wheat or roses grow where, but for him, barrenness 
would have been. He does not believe he could 
have made himself a poet if he had mortised rhymes 
together never so ingeniously ; nor does he suppose 
he could manage the affairs of nations, because 
he can manage a plough. Nevertheless, he is a 
proud man, — proud of his cleared land and of his 
woodland, — proud of his brooks and of his cows, 
— of his harvests and of his garden, — of his beau- 
tiful cottage, — of the vines about the porch and 
of the well-bound volumes that shine row over row 
against the wall, — of his mother, sitting beside 
him so comfortable and so respectable, — proud 
that he owes no man anything, and proud that he 
is not proud in any mean and selfish sense. 

A thousand times he might have resented the 
old insult of the piece of money, but he feels that 
" time at last sets all things even," and he is quite 
contented to wait, — so well content, indeed, that 
there is no waiting to do. He could not have 
been so well avenged any way as he is by his indif- 
ference. 

It is the middle of June, and the garden is full 
of flowers that still look toward Mrs. Gordon's a 
good deal, though Jerry says he don't care which 
way they look ; but we are quite sure they would 
not be so many nor so bright if there were no bright 
eyes looking down upon them from the opposite 



THE CHAKMED MONEY. 151 

windows. There are bright flowers immediately 
under the windows where the bright eyes are gaz- 
ing forth so often ; but to those eyes the flowers in 
the distance show the best. 

Fanny is a woman now, and though she sends 
no more letters to her friend Jerry that no one 
knows anything of, she sends a great many glances 
as full of kindly meaning as were the little sen- 
tences sent him so long ago. She has been home 
from school a whole year ; and though many times, 
in her walks and drives, she has met Jerry, and 
smiled upon him very sweetly, he has returned her 
smiles with only formal politeness. Of course 
Fanny Gordon does not care much for the like of 
him, — that is what he says to himself, and so he 
keeps up a show of indifference that he is very far 
from feeling. 

Henry has been at home a long time, too, spend- 
ing his time in idleness and in worse than idleness, 
so rumor says, and that things are growing from 
bad to worse with the Gordons. Still they manage 
to keep up an outside show, and hold their heads 
much above working-people like the Masons. But 
when the foundation is undermined, the time will 
come that the house must fall, and that time came 
to the Gordons. 

It was early autumn ; there was a little fire on 
the hearth, but the door toward the flower-gar- 



152 SNOW-BERBIES. 

den stood open, and Jerry sat in the door watch- 
ing the moonlight as it played along the grass and 
shone among the stalks of such of the hardier blos- 
soms as yet remained. 

All at once his heart gave a little start, — was 
it some bird rustling among the dry leaves ? No, 
it was the step of Fanny rustling along the fall- 
en leaves. She came without hesitation, without 
blushing, straight to where Jerry was sitting. " I 
could not go away," she said, putting out her hand 
to him, " without first coming to bid your mother 
and you good by ! " 

" Go away, Fanny ! Where are you going, and 
why ? " cried Jerry, surprised into cordiality and 
earnestness. 

Then Fanny sat down beside him in the moon- 
light and told him where she was going, and why. 
"Our fortune is all gone, and somebody must do 
something," she concluded. 

" But why should you go away to do some- 
thing?" 

" Because," Fanny answered, " we have no 
friends here ! " and then her voice first faltered, 
and she hid her face in her hands. 

" No friends 1 " said Jerry ; " with my mother 
and myself here? Fanny, how can you say 
that?" 

Then she told him that she was sure there was 



THE CHARMED MONEY. 153 

no reason why himself and his mother should be 
their friends ; but at any rate, they had no others, 
and she was going away to teach school, or to 
learn to sew, or to do something by which she 
could take care of herself. " Just think, Jerry," 
she says, " I have not a glove to my hand ! " And 
she held out her hand to him, red as a rose with 
the evening chill. 

Jerry took it between both his. " And suppose, 
Fanny, I should always keep it this way," he said, 
" you would not need a glove, would you ? " 

Fanny's face was all bright with blushes when 
Mrs. Mason came to say that supper was ready; 
and the place she took at the table that night be- 
came hers for all her life before long ; for, of course, 
she and Jerry were married, and two birds were 
never happier under the mother's wing than were 
they with the mother of Jerry. Everything pros- 
pered with them, and by and by they were the rich 
people in the town where they lived, and not the 
Gordons at all. 

One dreary night, when the outside show could 
not be kept up any longer, when they were in 'fact 
reduced to the last sixpence, they sat together, 
Mrs. Gordon and her son Henry, lamenting their 
hard fortune, and blaming each other, and blam- 
ing Fanny, whom they had never been to visit, and 
blaming everything but their own foolish pride and 



154 SNOW-BEEEIES. 

perverseness for the ruin and degradation that was 
now impending. 

Both started at the sound of a footstep ; it was 
a creditor's, no doubt. 

" What brought you here ? I don't owe you 
anything ! " exclaimed Henry, sullenly, when he 
saw that the visitor was Jerry Mason. 

" No," replied Jerry, " but I owe you a great 
deal " ; and taking from his pocket the piece of 
money Harry had flung at him so long ago, he 
laid it down on the table before him. Henry 
trembled and blushed for shame ; but when Jerry 
took his hand and said, " This piece of money has 
been a charm that has kept me from idleness and 
uselessness ; it has added to my lands and built 
me a house, beautified my garden, clothed my 
mother, and made her old age happy and respecta- 
ble, developed my own manhood, and crowned me 
with the love of the best of women. For all this 
I owe you something, and I am come to pay you. 
Take first this money and see what it can do for 
you. You are yet in the prime of life and can re- 
trieve and achieve everything ; come with me with 
as hearty a good-will as you came to leok at my 
goslings, and we will devise the way." Henry 
took the hand extended to him, and brushing the 
tears from his eyes, — the first ones that had wet 
them for long years, — said in accents that trem- 



TO A STAGNANT POND. 155 

bled, " I will go, Jerry, if you think I am worth sav- 
ing ; and my mother shall go too. Come, mother ! " 
So all three went together, and Fanny met and 
embraced them ; and then they sat down together 
and made plans for the future, and that was the 
happiest night of their lives. 



TO A STAGNANT POND. 

OPOND of tbe meadow, 
So low and so black, 
Say why are you lying thus, 
Flat on your back ! 

Week in and week out, 

And from night until morn, 

You have been doing nothing 
Since first you were born. 

Now if you are not dead. 

But only just dumb, 
Get up, sir, and take off" 

Your jacket of scum ! 

No sweet little flower 

To your dull bosom bends; 



156 SNOW-BEKRIES. 

You have only the hop -toad 
And snake for your friends ! 

No bird to your dark wave 
Comes twittering down, 

And the grass all about you 
Is withered and brown. 

It is time, and high time, 
You were setting to work, 

You sordid, unlovable, 
Beggarly shirk ! 

Just think, with your brow 
Into black wrinkles curled, 

You never have gladdened 
A heart in the world ! 

And if you would henceforth 
Escape from abuse, 

Get up, I beseech you, 
And be of some use ! 

Close at hand, only hid by 
The sheep-grazing hill, 

Your gad-about sister 
Is turning a mill. 

Her path is so pleasant, 
Her smile is so bright, 

The flocks stay about her 
All day and all night. 



TO A STAGNANT POND. 157 

The wild mint leans lowly, 

Her kiss is so sweet, 
And the stones that she treads on 

Sing under her feet. 

With foam-flowers always 

Her wet locks are crowned, 
And her bushes with berries 

Blush all the year round. 

She counts not the mill- work 

As doing her wrong, 
But makes the wheel partner, 

And dances along. 

And so, with her life 

And her labor content, 
She is queen of the meadow 

By common consent. 

Now here is a secret, 

Receive it in faith, — 
True life is in action, 

Stagnation is death. 

And this you may learn 

From your sister, the brook, 
As though it were written 

And bound in a book. 



158 SNOW-BERRIES. 

You die in your torpor, 
She rests in her strife, 

Because she is keeping 
The law of her life. 

And would you be happy 
As she at her mill, 

Throw off your scum jacket, 
And work with a will. 



THE POET TO THE PAINTER. 

PAINTER, paint me a sycamore, 
A spreading and snowy-limbed tree, 
Making cool shelter for three, 
And like a green quilt at the door 
Of the cabin near the tree, 
Picture the grass for me, 
With a winding and dusty road before, 
Not far from the group of three, 
And the silver sycamore-tree. 

'T will take your finest skill to draw 
From that happy group of three, 
Under the sycamore-tree, 

The little girl in the hat of straw 

And the faded frock, for she 



THE POET TO THE PAINTER. 159 

Is as fair as fair can be. 
You have painted frock and hat complete ! 
Now the color of snow you must paint her feet ; 
Her cheeks and lips from a strawberry-bed ; 
From sunflower-fringes her shining head. 

Now, painter, paint the hop-vine swing 

Close to the group of three, 
And a bird with bright brown eyes and wing, 

Chirping merrily. 

" Twit twit, twit twit, twee ! " 
That is all the song he makes, 
And the child to mocking laughter breaks. 

Answering, " Here are we, 

Father and mother and me ! " 
Pretty darling, her world is small, — 
Father and mother and she are all. 

Ah, painter, your hand is still ! 

You have made the group of three 

Under the sycamore-tree, 
But you cannot make all the skill 

Of your colors say, " Twit twit, twee 1 " 

Nor the answering, " Here are we, 

Father and mother and me." 
I '11 be a poet, and paint with words 
Talking children and chirping birds. 



160 SNOW^BERRIES. 



ONLY A DREAM. 

"The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, 
Unless the deed go with it" 

ONE time, when lying in my bed, 
Many a night ago, 
Flying and flapping over my head, 

There went a cunning crow. 
I might have struck the creature dead, 
She sailed so near and slow. 

I might have struck her as she went, 

(All in a dream lay I,) 
But thought was on the method bent, 

My fated bird should die ; 
And when at last the shaft was sent, 

The archer's time was by. 

" O cruel, cunning bird/' I said, 

" What made you fly away ? 
I would have dyed your black wings red, 

With but a moment's stay. 
Then you had flown without your head, " — 

(All in a dream I lay.) 

Her nest was in a giant tree, 

So safe and snug and high ; 
And I said, " If there your young ones be, 

I '11 kill them when they fly." 



ONLY A DREAM. 161 

'T was hard just then to climb and see, — 
(All in a dream lay I.) 

Afield with my two boys one morn, 

(This was the vision's close,) 
Each with a basket full of corn 

To plant the furrowed rows ; 
Right over us, in full-fledged scorn, 

There went three wicked crows. 

" You might have killed us once," they cried, 

" Our mother's nest you knew ; 
But now our wings are strong and wide, 

And we can caw at you ! " 
Then vanished all my manhood's pride, — 

The birds had spoken true. 

" O father," said my boys to me, 

" 'T is plain that crows will lie ; 
You knew what they would grow to be, 

Before they learned to fly, 
And would have killed them in the tree," — 

(All in a dream lay I.) 

Many and many a night since then 

I 've called to mind that crow, 
And thought how many thousand men 

Through all their lifetime go, 
Planning out times and seasons when 

They will do thus and so ; 



162 SNOW-BERKIES. 

But all their joys are shallow joys, 
Their praise augments their woes ; 

For I remember when my boys 
Denounced the taunting crows, 

A voice inside of all their noise, 
Condemning me, arose. 



INVENTORY OF A DRUNKARD. 

A HUT of logs without a door, 
Minus a roof and ditto floor ; 
A clapboard cupboard without crocks, 
Nine children without shoes or frocks ; 
A wife that has not any bonnet 
With ribbon bows and strings upon it, 
Scolding and wishing to be dead, 
Because she has not any bread. 

A teakettle without a spout, 

A meat-cask with the bottom out, 

A " comfort " with the cotton gone, 

And not a bed to put it on. 

A handle without any axe, 

A hatchel without wool or flax ; 

A potlid and a wagon-hub, 

And two ears of a washing-tub ; 

Three broken plates of different kinds, 

Some mackerel tails and bacon-rinds ; 



HUNTER'S SONG. 163 

A table without leaves or legs, 
One chair, and half a dozen pegs, 
One oaken keg with hoops of brass, 
One tumbler of dark-green glass ; 
A fiddle without any strings, 
A gunstock, and two turkey wings. 

O readers of this inventory, 

Take warning by its graphic story ; 

For little any man expects, 

Who wears good shirts with buttons in 'em, 

Ever to put on cotton checks, 

And only have brass pins to pin 'em ! 

'T is, remember, little stitches 

Keep the rent from growing great ; 

When you can't tell beds from ditches, 

Warning words will be too late. 



HUNTER'S SONG. 

I KNOW a mountain high, 
With its head against the sky, 
Where the stormy eagles fly 

East and west ; 
There, at morning's ruddy gleam, 
And in evening's purple beam, 
I have heard the nursling scream 
From the nest ! 



164 SNOW-BERRIES. 

O, I love that mountain high, 
With its head against the sky, 
And the hungry nurslings' cry, 

All forlorn ; 
For as winds went to and fro, 
Cutting furrows through the snow, 
In a hunter's hut so low, 

I was born. 

O, I love the rocky glade, 
Where my little brothers played, 
Where together they are laid 

In green beds ; 
With a water murmuring nigh 
Its eternal lullaby, 
And a blue strip of the sky 

At their heads. 



HAGEN WALDER. 

THE day with a cold, dead color 
Was rising over the hill, 
When little Hagen Walder 
Went out to grind in th' mill. 

All vainly the light in zigzags 
Fell through the frozen leaves, 

And like a broidery of gold 
Shone on his ragged sleeves. 



HAGEN WALDER. 165 

No mother had he to brighten 

His cheek with a kiss, and say, 
" 'T is cold for my little Hagen 

To grind in the mill to-day." 

And that was why the north-winds 

Seemed all in his path to meet, 
And why the stones were so cruel 

And sharp beneath his feet. 

And that was why he hid his face 

So oft, despite his will, 
Against the necks of the oxen 

That turned the wheel in th' mill. 

And that was why the tear-drops 

So oft did fall and stand 
Upon their silken coats that were 

As white as a lady's hand. 

So little Hagen Walder 

Looked at the sea and th' sky, 
And wished that he were a salmon 

In the silver waves to lie ; 

And wished that he were an eagle, 

Away through th' air to soar, 
Where never the groaning mill-wheel 

Might vex him any more ; 



166 SNOW-BERKIES. 

And wished that he were a pirate, 
To burn some cottage down, 

And warm himself; or that he were 
A market-lad in the town, 

With bowls of bright, red strawberries 

Shining on his stall, 
And that some gentle maiden 

Would come and buy them all. 

So little Hagen Walder 

Passed, as the story says, 
Through dreams, as through a golden gate, 

Into realities. 

And when the years changed places, 
Like the billows, bright and still, 

In th' ocean, Hagen Walder 
Was the master of the mill. 

And all his bowls of strawberries 

Were not so fine a show 
As are his boys and girls at church, 

Sitting in a row. 



A GOOSE AND A CROW. 167 



A GOOSE AND A CROW. 

TWO geese, scarcely knowing 
The east from the west, 
Got on to the water 

And rode off abreast, — 
Geese, you know, are not famed 
For their wisdom, at best. 

Well, these were perhaps 
Neither greater nor less 

Than their fellows, — each had on 
A very white dress, 

And both had short tails, 
And a neck like an S. 

The morning was genial, 

The water was still, 
And each with her heart 

On the end of her bill 
Began telling secrets, 

As geese sometimes will. 

" All ganders are vulgar," 

One said, i( all so low 
That one can't respect them ; 

My dear, do you know 
I am really going 

To marry a crow ! " 



168 SNOW-BEEKIES. 

"A crow ! " cried the other one, 

Slanting her eye : 
66 What ! one of those black things 

That swim in the sky ? 
How strange it would be 

To go swimming so high ! 

" But are you sure, darling, 
(Though 't is n't for me 

To question your wisdom,) 
That you shall agree ? 

I Ve heard say that crows 
Have their nests in a tree ! " 

" And what if they do, dear ? 

Should that make you doubt 
My wisdom ? " " No, darling, 

My fears were about 
The poor little goslings, — 

Might they not fall out ? " 

" Fall out of their own nest 
Ah, where could you go 

To find such a foolish fear ? 
Do you not know 

That the carefullest bird 
In the world is the crow ? 

" And when he shall have young 
To quicken his care, 



A GOOSE AND A CROW. 169 

Do you think he will leave his nest 

Out of repair ? 
Or, pray, do you think that 

A crow is a bear ? 

a Why, only this morning, 

The one I propose 
To marry (be sure, 

He 's the kindest of crows) 
Assured me that I should do 

Just as I chose ! 

" And so if I don't like 

My nest in a tree, 
Inasmuch as he means 

To defer thus to me, 
I will come down and build 

On the ground." " If that he 

" Continue his deference 

When you are matched," 
Said the wiser goose, " and if when 

Discords are hatched, 
He shall have no sharp claws 

Nor your eyes to be scratched ! " 

" I see," said the first goose, 

Receiving amiss 
The warning, " that you, madam, 

Envy my bliss, — 

8 



170 SNOW-BEEEIES. 

Good morning." The last word 
Was almost a hiss. 

They married, this stranger pair, 
For better or worse, 

And, being opposed 

In their natures, of course, 

They quarrelled, — she left him, 
Brought suit for divorce, — 

And charged him with saying 
A goose was a goose, 

Also with most cruel 
Neglect and abuse, 

And with being black, — all true, 
But no sort of use ! 

And so they are living, — 
He high in his tree, 

Misanthropic as ever 
A crow was, and she 

Decrying the courts 

That won't grant a decree. 

He says to his friends 

He was not understood, — 

Says he would n't get married 
Again if he could ; 

And she says he lies, 

For he knows that he would. 



PART VI. 

THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS 
HEART. 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 

ONCE, in the suburb of a beautiful village, 
which in our story we will call Heatherford, 
there lived an old woman whose only wealth was 
her garden and her little son Elijah, or Ligie, for 
that was the pet name which the fond mother gave 
her boy. No cottage in all the village was bright- 
er and prettier with pots of flowers and tidy keep- 
ing than that belonging to Ligie's mother. In- 
deed, it was no unfrequent thing to see rich peo- 
ple stop their carriages and look into the garden, 
where the finely cultivated vegetables looked al- 
most as well as the flowers that fringed the beds 
where they grew. At the foot of the garden, which 
sloped to the south, a spring broke out of a green 
wall of grass, and, escaping from the shadow of a 
willow-tree that grew there, ran crookedly away, 
shining and laughing as far as you could see. No 
corn had blades so thick and so green as that 
which Ligie planted and hoed, and no poppies 
were so large and so red as those fringing his 
cornfield. 

Sometimes after sunset Ligie's mother might be 



174 SNOW-BERRIES. 

seen walking down the clean paths between the 
lady-slippers and the lilacs, talking to her child in 
a voice, low and soft, and at other times gathering 
rose-leaves or hops in her white apron, scaring the 
birds that went early to bed, and making them 
sing their good-night songs anew. When the 
dew came there was contention between the rose- 
bushes and the hop-vines as to which smelled the 
sweeter, and Ligie and his mother, as they went up 
and down the paths, could never decide it ; the 
bees loved the roses best, but the birds swung 
on the hop-vines, and sung in the hop-vines the 
oftenest. 

Often Ligie's mother praised the industry and 
skill of her little son ; but she loved him more 
than the beautiful garden. It is probable that the 
people who admired the blossoming bean-vines and 
the waving corn saw only in Ligie a homely little 
gardener ; but to his mother no marigold was so 
bright as his head, and no violet so blue as his 
eyes, and the spring-water running away in sun- 
shine was to her music less pleasant than his 
laughter. 

As Ligie grew older, however, it was less and 
less often she heard this pleasant music ; for the 
boy grew silent and thoughtful, and, pitiful to re- 
late, more and more discontented, — sometimes, 
indeed, he would forget the work, and wander 
away to the ends of the earth in dreams. 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEAET. 175 

Every day the garden seemed narrower, and 
every day his thoughts flew higher and more dis- 
contentedly away. Grass was seen to grow in 
places from which it had been carefully kept in 
former times, the raspberry-vines to lop untied, 
and the strawberries to blush more and more 
faintly, as Ligie bent over them less and less 
often. * 

Many a time he leaned on his hoe-handle, and, 
gazing wistfully — I am afraid enviously — after 
some gay equipage, wished himself anywhere away 
from his mother's little garden, and out of sight of 
her poor little house. He wished there were no 
gardens in the world, sometimes, and sometimes 
that he might wake up in the morning and find 
his pillow a pillow all of gold ; for he thought idle- 
ness and money were the greatest blessings that 
could come to anybody, and desired most of all 
things to wear fine clothes, and to ride horses that 
were sleek and galloped over the country fleet as 
the wind. 

" My dear son is sick," thought the good mother 
of the discontented boy, and she gave him time 
and times to rest from his work, and baked cakes 
for him, and made him soft beds, and kissed 'and 
petted him very tenderly. But Ligie had been 
always used to her loving care, and received it as 
he did the air and the other common blessings of 
his life. 



176 SNOW-BERRIES. 

One day, when the customary meal of bread and 
milk was set before him, he went away from the 
table without so much as breaking the bread ; he 
said to his mother he was sick, but in his heart he 
thought if he could not have meat and honey he 
would not eat at all. Discontented with his 
mother, with himself, and with everything, he 
cast himself on the ground by the spring beneath 
the willow ; but the murmur of the waters could 
not silence the murmur in his heart, and the hedge 
of bean-vines near by was not strong enough to 
keep away wicked thoughts ; his hot hands wilted 
the cool grass on which they lay, and his hot brain 
withered and blackened all that came into it. 

He saw a good many boys dressed in fine clothes, 
and with shining curls down their shoulders, rid- 
ing by in splendid coaches ; and some of them 
held up their white hands tauntingly when they 
saw his tawny ones lying on the grass, — some 
even sneered at his garden, and said they had 
much better ones at home. Among the other 
passers, however, there came one day an old man 
that looked exceedingly sad, and who was terribly 
bowed down, and who, when he saw Ligie, called 
to his coachman to stop ; and when his prancing 
horses stood still, champing their silver bits, spoke 
to him in words so friendly and so strange that he 
knew not what to make of it. And no wonder 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEAET. 177 

Ligie knew not what to make of it, for, among other 
things, the old man asked him whether he would 
not like to be rich, and if he would sell his garden 
for a piece of gold as big as his mother's house. 
Ligie said nothing would make him so happy ; to 
which the old man replied that he did not want 
the garden, but that he would give him all the 
gold he wanted if he would consent to perform for 
him a trifling service ; and when Ligie asked what 
it was, and learned that it was only the carrying 
of a small burden, he readily agreed to go with 
the old man. It would be easier than working in 
the garden, he thought, — 0, anything would be 
easier than that ! and then to have all the gold he 
wanted, — surely, he could not suffer, no matter 
what he had to do ; so, with a bound, he sprang 
from the grass and into the coach ; the door closed, 
the silver latch shut with a snap, and his mother's 
house was hid from him forever. At first he cared 
very little about this ; fortune was his and the 
great world before him ; could he not buy a great 
palace if he chose, and why should he fret about 
a poor little cottage in a scarcely-heard-of village ? 
And as for the garden, why, he should be glad 
never to see it; and, for all he knew, his riches 
would procure him the pleasure of walking in the 
king's garden, and his roses and hops he supposed 
were poor affairs compared with the king's roses 



IT 8 SNOW-BERRIES. 

and hops ; probably he should see birds as big as 
eagles before nightfall, — birds that would make 
the little brown twitterers at home stay there for 
shame ; and he was surprised as they rode on and 
on to meet no such birds, and to see no prettier 
flowers than he had left at home. 

But one thing surprised him more than the 
fact of meeting no birds as big as eagles, — the 
old man by whose side he rode gave him no bur- 
den to carry. At last he ventured timidly to sug- 
gest it, for he feared he was not earning his pleas- 
ure. " By and by," said the old man, and that 
was all. 

Directly, however, he began to be secretly glad 
that no burden was given him, and to say in his 
heart, " Perhaps the old man will forget it alto- 
gether, and I have the gold all for nothing" ; for 
when one bad thought got into his mind, a thou- 
sand others ran in behind it. 

" What a good thing I have done," he kept say- 
ing, as they went along ; " everybody that sees me 
will envy me, and won't that make me proud and 
happy ! " 

That night he slept in a richly-furnished cham- 
ber, where perfumes that seemed to him sweeter 
than roses loaded the air, and where a brilliant 
light burned at the head of the bed he slept on, — 
a bed greatly softer than the one he had left at 
home. 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 179 

In the morning a rich repast was served to him 
on shining plate ; he had not only meat and honey, 
but wine, and stronger drink than wine. 

The second day an immense distance was trav- 
ersed ; and once or twice, when the motion of the 
coach grew tiresome, Ligie thought he heard a 
voice in him saying, " You might as well have 
stayed at home, little boy ! " And each time he 
drowned it by inquiring of the old man whether 
he should not now take the burden agreed upon. 
" By and by," the old man said, and that was all. 
" He is a very strange man," thought Ligie ; and, 
turning to look at him, he perceived, for the first 
time, that there was no smile in his face and no 
light in his eyes, and that his skin was dried like 
parchment and wrinkled as though it was drawn 
over dry bones. His hair was very white, and it 
seemed to Ligie as though it had been dead a long 
time. Happening to touch one of his fingers, he 
found it so cold that, shivering, he shrank away. 
Then first the old man smiled, — a grim, sarcastic 
smile, as if the child's motion were one he was well 
used to, and expected. 

Ligie feared he had offended, and the mysterious 
voice said to him very plainly now, " You had bet- 
ter have stayed at home." " No, no," replied Li- 
gie, " I am glad I came away " ; but they were only 
words, and the feeling of gladness was not in his 



180 SNOW-BERRIES. 

heart. Then came the thought of his mother, and 
with it a pain shot through his bosom, — a pain 
that was not only sharp, but hot as fire. " If you 
please, sir, I will take the burden," he said ; " I 
am getting tired of doing nothing." The old man 
smiled again, and answered, " By and by," and 
that was all. 

Day after day they travelled so together, — the 
old man silent and sad, and the boy growing impa- 
tient, and tired of the everlasting motion and noise 
of the close-shut coach in which they rode. Night 
after night he slept in a soft bed, and morning after 
morning was served with dainties more dainty than 
he had ever imagined ; but after a few weeks he 
began to think of the plain fare at home with re- 
gret. Then the voice laughed, and said, " Fool 
that you were to come away ! " and this time poor 
Ligie could make no answer. 

And day after day he asked the old man to allow 
him to carry the burden agreed upon, and day 
after day the old man replied, " By and by," and 
that was all. 

At last the rolling and swinging of the coach 
made him sick, the healthful color went from his 
cheek, and all the strength he used to have seemed 
to forsake him. The time was come that people 
looked enviously upon him as he rode along ; but 
so far from gratifying, it but added to Ligie's dis- 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 181 

comfort ; no one thought of giving him love and 
sympathy now, he could very well afford to do 
without them, so they who saw him believed. Poor 
Ligie ! the less he was pitied, the more he pitied 
himself; and so, day after day, and week after week, 
he and the old man journeyed on and on, search- 
ing for pleasure which they never found. So weary 
grew Ligie at length, that he resolved to quit the 
old man, who had never given him the proposed 
burden, but still said, " By and by," whenever re- 
minded of it ; and one day, seeing him asleep, and 
his gray hair fallen low about his eyes, the wretched 
child softly unlocked the coach-door, and made 
haste to be gone, or tried to make haste, for, to his 
horror, he found that it was with the greatest diffi- 
culty he could move at all. His limbs were as 
limbs asleep, and his back was doubled down al- 
most like the old man's back. 

" So ho ! " exclaimed his mysterious companion, 
" you repent your bargain, do you ? Well, I am 
sorry, but a bargain is a bargain ; I never fail to 
fulfil mine." 

" How can you say that ? " said Ligie ; " have I 
not been with you the longest year that was ever 
made, and where is the burden I was to carry ? I 
can't live this way any longer, for doing nothing is 
the hardest work I ever did." 

Then the old man laughed aloud, and said, " My 



182 SNOW-BEKRIES. 

son, you have the burden already ; it is that that 
weighs you down." 

" It is not true," answered Ligie ; and he unfolded 
his arms to convince the old man that he had no 
burden ; but he only shook his head incredulously, 
and added, " You have it concealed ; it is the way 
rich people carry burdens." 

Ligie was now angry, and opened his clothing 
even to his bosom, to convince the old man that he 
concealed nothing. 

" You have it for all that," was the reply ; " and 
because of it you cannot lift yourself up." 

Then Ligie grew pale, and trembled, saying, 
" How can I have a burden which I cannot see ? " 

" Is pain the less certain because you cannot see 
it ? " the old man said. " I did not stipulate 
whether you were to carry the burden in your 
arms, or on your head, or in your heart" ; and he 
smiled a smile half bitterness and half sadness as 
he spoke. 

Then came the truth crushing through Ligie's 
senses, — the burden was in his heart ; and cover- 
ing his face with his hands, he cried a long while. 

" In mercy," said the old man, " I gave you 
little by little ; but it was none the less sure, and 
'By and by' has come." 

The low voice never spoke so clearly as it spoke 
now, saying, " mistaken youth, you have sold 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 183 

your birthright for a mess of pottage ! " "0 ter- 
rible, terrible voice, why do you torment me ? " 
said Ligie ; and the voice answered, " Such is my 
work." 

After a season of despair, however, Ligie began 
to imagine, very foolishly, that strong drink and 
strong pleasures would dissolve the stone which he 
was persuaded had been wickedly gotten into his 
heart. Without sorrow on the part of either, he 
and his friend — if friend he might be called — 
took separate ways. True to his foolish imagin- 
ings, he saw dances, and heard music, and drank 
wine, and stronger drink than wine, and bought 
great houses and much land, gazed on fine pictures, 
some of them painted by the greatest artists in the 
world ; but, through all, Ligie remembered his 
mother's little house and garden with painful re- 
gret, and over all he heard the low voice reproach- 
ing him. He even came to walk in the king's gar- 
den, and to speak familiarly with princes ; but they 
seemed to him not unlike other men, and even for 
their praises he felt none the better, but, while 
they smiled, often found his thoughts travelling 
away to the obscure village of Heatherford, and 
when he drank wine it seemed to him not so sweet 
as the cool water of his mother's well. 

All his childish dream was fulfilled, — he had 
waked to find his pillow a pillow of gold ; but he 



184 SNOW-BERRIES. 

would gladly have given it for the pillow of com- 
mon down which his mother's hands used to make 
so pleasant ; nevertheless, something held him 
back. Was he ashamed to have his rich friends 
know that he was born in a low, little house, and 
that his mother was a poor woman ? I am afraid 
so. 

Years and years went by, and the little gardener 
was a little gardener no more ; and thicker than 
the years crowded upon each other crowded the 
wrinkles in his face ; and before the pleasure he 
sought was found, his hair grew white as the frost, 
and his step slow as the sloth. 

Celebrated waters he plunged into, and hired 
with much gold physicians of great repute to treat 
his malady, which, in spite of all their skill, grew 
only the worse ; indeed, it seemed to Ligie some- 
times that the stone in his heart was grown to be a 
mountain. 

And all the night and all the day the voice within 
him said to him, " Go home, Ligie " ; and all the 
night and all the day Ligie said to the voice, " At the 
new year, or in the spring-time, or when the leaves 
fall, I will go." And still, as he sailed in vessels or 
rode on cushions, his prayer was for the feet of his 
lost youth and the strength of his lost youth, to 
walk as he used to do. Often he tried to walk, 
feeling his way along with a stick ; but he fancied 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 185 

he frightened the birds and spoiled their songs, for 
sure was he they sang not as they used to sing 
among the sweet-smelling hops of his mother's gar- 
den. The little boys that were laughing and kick- 
ing up the dust stopped their playing as he came 
near, and gazed on him with eyes full of fear, in- 
stead of sunshine. If flowers fringed the wayside, 
their tops seemed dusty and dry, and not dewy and 
sweet as they used to be. The young girl who sat 
singing her ditty at the window, when she saw his 
frowning visage and bent form, drew in her breath 
and her music, and hastily pulled down the sash. 

The very cattle ran away from him, stopping not 
till the width of the meadow in which they pas- 
tured was between themselves and him. The hens 
left their peeping broods and crept away, afraid to 
fly at him as they did at the urchin who plagued 
them. 

Seeing the sorry effect he had upon bird and 
beast, he grew more and more dissatisfied, and the 
burden in his heart weighed heavier and heavier 
upon him. 

Something like the shadow of gladness passed 
over him, when in a valley before him he saw rising 
the spires of a quiet village. " I will abide here," 
he said, " and try if the air will not soften this ter- 
rible stone." So he hired a house, and physicians, 
and attendants, and made himself a home, but 



186 SNOW-BERRIES. 

found little of the peace he sought. Consternation 
ran up and down the streets, when it was known 
among the people that an old man with a stone in 
his heart would thenceforth abide among them, for 
the physicians pronounced his malady not only in- 
curable, but the most infectious of all diseases ; so 
the attendants he had went away from him, and all 
his gold could not hire others in their places. In 
vain he sought religious comfort ; the clergyman 
to whom he applied was of the opinion that Ligie 
had not only a stone in his heart, but that he had 
a demon there, into the bargain ; and this was cer- 
tainly poor consolation. 

Then the doctors resolved that the poor man 
should not go abroad any more, for there was never 
such fright as the stone and the demon occasioned. 

When the doomed man was informed of the ver- 
dict, he said it was just and right, and he further- 
more admitted that when he listened he could hear 
a voice within him that condemned him. Then 
the wise men recommended entire abstinence from 
all exertion of mind and body, and constant lis- 
tening to the condemning voice, with as much 
meditation on the stone as possible. 

And all the people exclaimed, " Yea, verily, 
these physicians are wiser men than till now we 
knew them to be ! " and their fame stood before 
them like a light that made common people almost 
afraid. 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 187 

Poor Ligie submitted patiently to the treatment, 
and also to separation from all human society, and 
found all the satisfaction he had in hugging his 
woes. However, he grew no better. Sometimes 
he would creep to his windows, and indulge in the 
harmless occupation of looking into the sunshine ; 
but this habit was no sooner discovered than it was 
resolved by the people that the man with the stone 
in his heart should be put in irons for the first of- 
fence, and that for the second he should be impris- 
oned for life. 

" He has already offended twice," said one of the 
most fearful ; and upon himself he took the admin- 
istration of justice, and, stealing to the old man's 
house in the night, secured the door with a ponder- 
ous bar. 

It was dreadful to hear the prisoner's moans 
after that ; no one who heard them once could be 
induced to go near him again ; so he lay moaning 
and groaning to himself. Some of the more super- 
stitious believed it was the demon that cried, and 
not the man himself ; but there were some who 
thought a stone in the heart was enough to make 
anybody moan. 

" We shall have to break his heart, and so free 
it from the stone," said the surgeon ; and but for 
an accident it is likely the cruel suggestion might 
have been carried out. 



188 SNOW- BERRIES. 

An old woman, residing in the suburbs of the 
town, remarkable for nothing but industry, mod- 
esty, and strong common sense, chanced to come 
near this old man's house one stormy midnight, as 
she was returning home from having dressed a 
corpse. She had gone abroad so little, and been 
so given to minding her own affairs, that she had 
never once heard of the old man with a stone in his 
heart, and came fearlessly to the very door. The 
moon shone bright and friendly through the chinks, 
and as she peeped in she saw the glitter of two 
eyes that looked like the eyes of a famished wolf. 

In vain the prisoner cried out to her to flee away, 
saying he had a great stone in his heart, and was 
possessed of a demon ; the assertion sounded so 
much like nonsense to the ears of the old woman, 
she refused to go, and furthermore the glitter of the 
man's eyes told plainly enough that he was starving ; 
so, notwithstanding his entreaties that she should 
leave him to his fate, and save herself, she made 
haste to unbar the door, and, walking straight to 
the straw where he lay, bade him arise and go with 
her. 

At first he refused, saying that he had a stone in 
his heart, and a demon in his bosom, and that to go 
with her was impossible. 

" Ah, yes," said the old woman, " I see how it 
is," for she knew that too much brooding on light 




THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 189 

afflictions will sometimes produce heavy ones, and 
was resolved to humor his disease in order to cure 
it. " I know a great witch who can cure you," 
she said ; " there is not a doubt of it ;. she has 
brought many back to health and happiness, whose 
minds were gone far astray, and whose feet were 
near the borders of the grave. Else quickly, and 
come along with me." 

The old man lifted himself on one elbow, and 
said he had tried all remedies in vain, and that he 
had no courage for a new trial ; but though he 
said he had no courage, he smiled faintly, and felt 
a very little courage. 

" Ah, it is not such medicine as you have been 
used to with which the witch cures," said the old 
woman ; "it is with a charm known only to her- 
self, said to be the pleasantest thing in the world." 

She spoke hopefully and cheerfully, and the man 
answered, " Let us go to her at once," and he 
arose, and looked with shining, hungry eyes close 
in the old woman's face ; and, taking his limber, 
weak, and worthless hands in hers, she led him out 
of his miserable den, and they took their way to- 
gether through the village, and struck into a sweet- 
scented clover-field, lighted by the clearest and 
brightest of moons. 

As they went along, Ligie told of the many 
things he had suffered in the hope of cure, and 



190 SNOW-BERRIES. 

that withal he had grown worse and worse, till he 
had come to be the miserable creature she beheld. 

At first the old woman was obliged to walk very 
slowly ; but gradually she quickened her steps, and, 
unaware, her companion quickened his, too ; and 
as he walked faster and faster he straightened him- 
self more, and when they reached the nice little 
home where the woman lived he stood nearly up- 
right. 

The first care of the nurse was to feed her pa- 
tient with plain but wholesome and nutritious food ; 
and this done, she made him a bed, very clean and 
comfortable, where he slept soundly till morning. 

His first inquiry on waking was for the witch, 
and his first desire was for an immediate inter- 
view. 

" The witch lives a good way off," said the nurse, 
" and to leave home for so long a journey, I must 
needs make some preparation ; and if you will con- 
sent to help a little, only a very little, I shall be 
ready so much the sooner." 

Ligie said he had not done a chore for years ; 
nevertheless, he would attempt whatever task she 
would set for the sake of being brought so much 
the sooner to the witch. So the old woman took 
him to the garden, and set him to weeding the 
beds there ; and as he worked he gained strength 
to work, so before noon the garden-beds were as 
clean as they could be. 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 191 

When the old woman came out and saw what he 
had done, she was well pleased, and said she had 
never found so good a gardener in her life ; and 
she added, " We will soon be ready for the journey 
at this rate." 

Ligie was a good deal tired and a little hungry 
with the work, and when the nurse brought a plat- 
ter containing bread and fruit and meat, and 
placed it on a bench that stood in a shady place, he 
quite forgot in the enjoyment of it the stone in his 
heart ; and after the meal he forgot it for an hour 
longer in the pleasant sleep that came to him as he 
lay on the cool, grassy bed that Nature had made 
for him. 

Toward sunset the old woman appeared, and di- 
rected her patient to cut off all the ends of the 
bean-vines that were trailing from the tops of the 
poles toward the ground. 

When Ligie hesitated, and said he could not lift 
himself up for such work, she encouraged him to 
believe that he might straighten himself sufficiently 
for the task, and assured him of the impossibility 
of making the journey to the witch's house till 
the bean-vines were attended to. Hearing this, he 
lifted himself up, and began to clip off the ends of 
the bean-vines. They were sweet with blossoms, 
reminding him of the old garden at home ; and in 
the interest of his occupation, he thought nothing 



192 SNOW-BERRIES. 

about the terrible crook in his back, and when at 
last he felt for it, it was gone. 

He began now to think his hostess was the witch 
who had charmed the stone out of his heart, and 
from that time manifested no unwillingness to do 
whatever she bade. 

Day by day she set him harder tasks, professing 
all the time when such a tree was felled, and 
such a field ploughed, or the orchard-trees pruned, 
or some other task accomplished, she would jour- 
ney with him to the witch's house. But the work 
stretched itself out before Ligie as far as he could 
see ; for while he gathered apples he saw the corn 
ripening, and of itself breaking out of the husk ; 
and as he thought more about his work he thought 
less about the witch, and finally began to conclude 
there was no such thing in the world as a witch. 

At last the heap in the crib was rounded up with 
the last golden ears, the oxen turned loose among 
the corn-stalks, and a bright wood-fire made on the 
hearth of the good old woman's house. In the 
middle of the floor the table was spread with pump- 
kin-pies, and apple-tarts, and sweetcakes, and all 
the variety which a country housewife knows so 
well how to provide. All the friends of the old 
woman had been invited to rejoice with her over 
the restoration of her patient ; but, strange to say, 
where one came there were a dozen who stayed 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 193 

away, for they now feared the harmless old woman 
as much as they had formerly feared Ligie. If he 
was cured of stone in the heart, she must be a witch, 
that was all ; so hard is it for us to believe in the 
virtue of simple things, and that we have only to 
wash and be clean. If Ligie had done some great 
thing, then it would have been easy to believe. 

" 0, if my mother were here to rejoice with me, 
how happy I should be ! " sighed Ligie, as he con- 
cluded reflections not unlike what I have written ; 
" for though I am old and worn and weary, I 
might yet do much good; but. how much more 
might I have done if in youth I had improved my 
opportunities, instead of wasting them in vain and 
foolish dreaming and repining, — dreaming of im- 
possible things, and repining that good things were 
not the best things ! " 

Then in his mind he made a picture of his 
mother's little house he had once so come to de- 
spise, and of the garden he had grown so tired of, 
and it seemed to him that the king's garden was 
not half so beautiful, that Eden itself could not 
have been so beautiful. In the light of memory 
the loveliness, which in reality he had failed to see, 
came out clear and distinct, and he marvelled that 
he could have received such blessings and been so 
unconscious of them. 

Tears came to his eyes, and in the anguish of 

9 M 



194 SNOW-BERRIES. 

repentance he wept aloud, saying over and over, 
" 0, to have back my lost youth ! " Then it was 
he seemed to hear, between his sobbings, a voice 
like his mother's, saying, " My son, my dear, lit- 
tle son!" 

A thrill of joy ran through him, which was as 
if all the heavens had opened, and in the rapture 
of the moment he awoke, — for he had been all 
this time in a dream, — awoke to find himself 
little Ligie, and to see the sunset shadows on the 
water of the spring, that flowed from its fountain 
under the willow-tree, by which he remembered 
to have thrown himself at noonday. But when he 
was fully awake the thrill of joy kept still thrilling 
through his bosom ; it was not all a dream ; he 
heard the sweet voice of his mother still saying, 
" My dear, little son," and all the beauty he had 
seen shining so clearly in the light of memory he 
saw shining all round about him. 

Over a bank of golden clouds the sun was peep- 
ing and smiling his good-night, the birds were 
hushing in the hop-vines and under the roses, and 
under his feet the grass was cool and green as it 
could be. In the distance stood dark, leafy woods, 
with cows and sheep and lambs feeding along the 
hills. 

But the brightest spot of all the picture was the 
little house under the apple-tree, and with the 



THE MAN WITH A STONE IN HIS HEART. 195 

morning-glory at the window, and the red creep- 
ers over the porch, where stood his mother smil- 
ing, and calling, " Ligie, my son, my dear, little 



son I 



r » 



You may be sure he lingered not long even for 
the sake of the beautiful landscape, glorified as it 
was by the last red light of the day, and the first 
white light of the stars, but ran at once up the 
smooth path between the lilacs and lady-slippers, 
answering, " I am coming, mother, I am com- 
ing ! " it was as if he had new feet and new hands 
and new senses ; as if a new world had been made 
about him ; as if, indeed, a great stone had been 
taken out of his heart. There was the table spread 
in the middle of the floor with cakes and apple- 
tarts and meat and milk, just as he had dreamed, 
and his hair was all unfaded, and his limbs strong 
and full of health. 

What more could he have ? Nothing, nothing. 
Ligie felt this, and clasping his hands, he bowed 
his head, and said, " How good God is, and how 
unmindful and bad we are ! " 

And seeing how his spirit was changed, his 
mother inquired of him what had happened ; and 
when he told her all his dream, and his thoughts 
previous to the dream, they laughed and wept to- 
gether, and wished that everybody could have such 
a dream, and learn by it to appreciate the blessings 



196 SNOW-BERRIES. 

they have, rather than mourn for those they have 
not ; and to work with willing hands and a reso- 
lute will in whatever field their portion may be 
cast. 



CATY JANE. 



ONE summer morning, as I walked 
Along a shady lane, 
I met a black-eyed little girl, 
Whose name was Caty Jane. 

She had a pretty basket full 
Of blossoms blue and white, 

And when I asked her where she went, 
She hid her face from sight ; 

And sitting where the clover grew 
So sweet and thick and red, 

She said, " I had a sister once 
Who loved me, and is dead ; 

" And yonder, to the slope on which 

You see the willows wave, 
I 'm going with my flowers, for there 

Is little Annie's grave. 



CATY JANE. 197 

" Her goodness and her gentleness 

I oftentimes forgot ; 
She never said an unkind word, — 

I wish that I had not. 

" We had a play-house once, beside 

This very shady lane ; 
I wish it never had been made," 

Said little Caty Jane. 

" 'T was carpeted with grass, and weeds 

Were piled to make the walls ; 
The beds were spread with burdock-leaves, 

And mother gave us dolls. 

" We had some broken cups, and had 

Some skeins of thread, I know, 
And sometimes we pretended we 

Were women, and would sew ; 

" And often I would visit her, 

And she would come again, 
And make believe to visit me," 

Said little Caty Jane. 

" One day, when cloudily the sun 

Was going down the hill, 
Dear Annie said, ' We must go home,' 

The wind was growing chill. 



198 SNOW-BEKEIES. 

"And when she wrapt her apron round 
Her neck and shoulders bare, 

I laughed, and called her grandmamma, 
And said it was n't fair 

" That she should run away, nor care 

For playing, nor for me. 
1 O Caty Jane/ said Annie, then, 

' I 'm cold as I can be. 

"'It seems as if no fire nor quilt 
Could make me warm again/ 

And, sure enough, they never did," 
Said little Caty Jane. 

" She said that more and more her head 

Kept aching all the while, 
And from her hands the playthings fell, 

But still she tried to smile. 

" And when the moon came up and shone 

So cold across the floor, 
She said that we would never play 

Together any more. 

" ' Well, if you feel so very bad, 

Do let 's go home,' said I, 
1 That you may have a chance to make 

Your will before you die.' 



CATY JANE. 199 

" And so I ran and left her in 

Our play-house by the lane, 
And ran the faster when she called, 

* Don't leave me, Caty Jane.' 

" And sitting by the warm wood-fire, 

In little Annie's chair, 
I fell asleep, and woke in fright, — 

My sister was n't there. 

" * She must be in a neighbor's house,' 

My mother said ; but I 
Hid in her lap my face, and cried 

As hard as I could cry ; 

u And told her I had left her in 

Our play-house by the lane ; 
And there they found her, sure enough," 

Said little Caty Jane, 

" Lying upon the frozen ground, 

As cold as cold could be; 
And when I called her pretty names 

She did not speak to me. 

" But with pale cheek and shut eyes lay 

Upon our little bed. 
And when the sun arose at morn," 

Poor mourning Caty said, 



200 SNOW-BERRIES. 

" I called her to get up, and kissed 
Her cheek to make her wake ; 

And when she did not speak nor smile, 
I thought my heart would break. 

" I brought my playthings and my dolls, 
And laid them on the bed, 

And told her they were hers to keep/* 
Poor little Caty said. 

" And, waiting there in fear and doubt, 
They softly kissed my brow, 

And told me I must live without 
My sister Annie, now. 

" O then I knew how dear she was," 

Said little Caty Jane, 
" And thought if she could be alive, 

And play with me again, 

" I M say a thousand things to her 

That I had never said. 
'T was easy work to think kind words 

To say when she was dead." 

And with her eyes brimful of tears, 
She went along the lane ; 

No sister now had she to love, — 
Poor little Caty Jane ! 



THE STREET BEGGAR. 201 

Seeing how very long she stayed 

By Annie's lonesome bed, 
I thought, If other little girls, 

Whose sisters are not dead, 

Could know how blest they are, and see 

The sad look Caty wore, 
They never would be heard to speak 

A cross word any more. 

For we must do to others just 

As we would be done by, 
If we would learn to live in peace, 

Or peacefully to die. 



THE STREET BEGGAR. 

SHAKE not your glossy curls with a " No," 
As you sit in the warm and rosy glow 
'Twixt your hearth and pictured wall ; 
Ah, my lady, you do not know 
How folk feel with their feet in the snow, 
And no bright fire at all. 

A sixpence ! that you will never miss ; 
See what a baby you have to kiss, 

Honor and wealth to prove ; 
Ah, my lady, you cannot guess 
9* 



202 SNOW-BEEEIES. 

How folk feel in a night like this, 
With no little child to love. 

From house to house I have gone all day, - 
" Nothing for beggars," is all they say, 

Though a banquet waiting stands ; 
Ah, you never have known the way 
Poor folk feel when their heads are gray 

And palsy shaking their hands. 

For sake of charity say not " No." 

I am almost famished, — I cannot go, — 

I must steal or starve, — and why ? 
Because, my lady, you do not know 
How folk feel with their feet in the snow, 

Turned out from your fires to die. 



EVIL CHANCE. 

WHEN falls the hour of evil chance, - 
And hours of evil chance will fall, ■ 
Strike, though with but a broken lance, — 
Strike, though you have no lance at all. 

Shrink not, whate'er the odds may be, — 
Shrink not, however dark the hour, — 

The barest possibility 

Of good deserves your utmost power. 



PLEA FOE THE BOYS. . 203 



PLEA FOR THE BOYS. 

YOUNG men must work, and old men rest,- 
They have earned their quiet joys ; 
And everywhere, from east to west, 
The boys must still be boys. 

They do not want your larger sight, 

Nor want your wisdom grim : 
The boy has right to the boy's delight, 

And play is the work for him. 

The idle day is the evil day, 

And work in its time is right; 
But he that wrestles best in the play 

"Will wrestle best in the fight. 

Then do not, as their hour runs by, 

Their harmless pleasures clip ; 
For he that sails his kite to the sky 

May sometime sail a ship. 

And soon enough the years will steal 

Their mood of frolic joys ; 
So keep your shoulder to the wheel, 

And let the boys be boys. 



204 SNOW-BERRIES. 



WORK. 



DOWN and up and up and down, — 
Over and over and over, — 
Turn in the little seed, dry and brown, 

Turn out the bright red clover ! 
Work, and the sun your work will share, 

And the rain in its time will fall, 

For Nature, she worketh everywhere, 

And the grace of God through all. 

With hand on the spade and heart in the sky, 

Dress the ground and till it ; 
Turn in the little seed, brown and dry, 

Turn out the golden millet ; 
Work, and your house shall be duly fed, 

Work, and rest shall be won ; 
I hold that a man had better be dead 

Than alive, when his work is done ! 

Down and up and up and down, 

On the hill-top, low in the valley ; 
Turn in the little seed, dry and brown, 

Turn out the rose and the lily. 
Work with a plan, or without a plan, 

And your ends they shall be shaped true ; 
Work, and learn at first-hand, like a man, 

The best way to know is to do ! 



205 



Down and up till life shall close, 

Ceasing not your praises ; 
Turn in the wild, white, winter snows, 

Turn out the sweet, spring daisies. 
Work, and the sun your work will share, 

And the rain in its time will fall, 
For Nature, she worketh everywhere, 

And the grace of God through all. 



COUNSEL. 



THOUGH sin hath marked thy brother's brow, 
Love him in sin's despite, 
But for his darkness, haply thou 
Hadst never known the light. 

Be thou an angel to his life, 

And not a demon grim ; 
Since with himself he is at strife, 

O be at peace with him. 

Speak gently of his evil ways, 

And all his pleas allow ; 
For since he knows not why he strays 

From virtue, how shouldst thou ? 

Love him, though all thy love he slights, 
For ah, thou canst not say 



206 SNOW-BERKIES. 

But that his prayerless days and nights 
Have taught thee how to pray. 

Outside themselves all things have laws, 

The atom and the sun ; 
Thou art thyself, perhaps, the cause 

Of sins which he has done. 

If guiltless thou, why surely then 
Thy place is by his side, — 

It was for sinners, not just men, 
That Christ the Saviour died. 



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